HARDY secures a third total and consecutive week at No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart (dated Feb. 7), as “Favorite Country Song” drew 31.6 million audience impressions Jan. 23-29, according to Luminate.
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The track marks HARDY’s fourth Country Airplay No. 1 as a recording artist and his first to reign for multiple weeks. It’s also his longest-leading hit overall, encompassing both leaders as a performer and those as a cowriter for other artists, surpassing the two-week chart-toppers “Single Saturday Night” by Cole Swindell (2021) and “God’s Country” by Blake Shelton (2019). In total, “Favorite Country Song” is the Mississippi native’s 15th No. 1 as an author. Kenny Chesney, Florida Georgia Line and Morgan Wallen, among others, have also led with HARDY cowrites.
With Country Airplay No. 1s both as an artist and a songwriter, HARDY tells Billboard that stepping further into the artist role has clarified how broadcast radio responds to his material. “I appreciate when I can give radio a very delicate subject, or a very touchy subject, or a dark subject and a station is like, ‘Dude, this song is amazing — we love that you go for it,’” he notes. “You just don’t hear that as a songwriter but I get to hear it more directly as an artist.”
As for the three-week Country Airplay command for “Favorite Country Song,” “I don’t [track] all the ‘inside baseball’ on purpose,” HARDY says. “I’d drive myself crazy if I was talking to my radio team and label every day. They worked really hard; I just did everything I could to maintain those relationships and it turned into a hit.”
Fan response was the clearest signal that the song might behave differently. “Realizing how quickly the fans were singing it back to me was the change,” HARDY adds. “Seeing them pick up on it so fast, I knew it was going to be different.”
Meanwhile, reigns of three weeks or more on Country Airplay remain in the minority. Of the 166 No. 1s from 2020 to the present, just 31 have held the summit for at least three weeks. Five did so in 2024, following seven in 2023, five each in 2022 and 2021 and two in 2020. Two record-setting titles in that span stretched their runs to double digits: Nate Smith’s “World on Fire” (2023-24) and Wallen’s “You Proof” (2022-23).
That’s ‘Better’
Max McNown lands his first Country Airplay top 10 with “Better Me for You (Brown Eyes),” rising 13-10 with 15.5 million in audience (up 8%). The song reached No. 10 on Adult Pop Airplay in December.
‘Gary’ Gets It Done
Stephen Wilson Jr. makes his Country Airplay debut with “Gary” at No. 55 (829,000, up 32%). Inspired, in part, by his blue-collar upbringing in Indiana (in the town of Seymour, about 200 miles southeast of Gary), the self-penned song traces back to a church marquee Wilson spotted while driving, listing memorial details for a man named Gary. The name stuck, becoming a vessel for an imagined life shaped by the working-class figures Wilson observed growing up.
A former Mars Inc. research and development scientist — he helmed the launch of dog chew Dentastix — Wilson has a history of building things designed to stick around.
