RCA Nashville’s Old Dominion rushes into the No. 1 position on the Billboard Country Airplay chart this week with their RIAA GOLD-certified hit, debut single “Break Up With Him.” Forty weeks ago when the beloved song hit the airwaves it came in like a lion being the most added song at country radio that week with 42 new playlist “adds” and 76 first week reporting stations spinning the song by the group that NASH Country Weekly exclaims is “Not your average country band.”
The out of the box bang came by no accident. Prior to hitting terrestrial airwaves, “Break Up With Him” spent SIX consecutive weeks at No. 1 on SiriusXM’s The Highway Hot 45 Countdown and it’s because of that early exposure that the band gained quick momentum on Country Radio and now has reached the top seat on the Billboard Country Airplay chart.
The five songwriters that make-up Old Dominion have together racked up FIVE No. 1 records at Country Radio for artists Dierks Bentley, Kenny Chesney, Blake Shelton, Tyler Farr and The Band Perry, but what makes “Break Up With Him” that much more special is that it’s the first song that Old Dominion has written together collectively as a group — Matthew Ramsey, Trevor Rosen, Brad Tursi, Geoff Sprung, and Whit Sellers all sharing writer credits.
“It’s gonna take a while for this one to set in,” says Rosen. “We’ve been lucky enough to have other No. 1 songs as the songwriter for other artists, but to have one as an artist ourselves is something we’ve dreamt about since we were kids. And today it has just come true.”
“That’s one of those songs that developed as we were out on the road,” Sellers says. “The legend is that we were just kind of jamming along with something at sound check and got the feel going and these guys finished it off in the van.”
“I don’t know why I had the idea for a one-sided conversation,” Ramsey says. “We were in the van. Everyone was asleep but Trevor, so I went back to him, and said [first line], ‘Hey girl, it’s late,’ and we were just giggling. You just start with that first line and see where it takes you and we ended up landing on ‘Break Up With Him’.”
Kicking off release week for their debut album Meat and Candy (Nov. 6) with a No. 1 song at Country Radio is a tremendous way to start things off for any artist, but Old Dominion continues to ride the wave of accomplishments. This past summer they were invited to join Chesney on The Big Revival Tour, performing to 18 stadiums and have already been tapped by Chesney to join him again next year for his Spread The Love Tour in 2016.
Furthermore, last week the band was tapped by NPR to receive a NPR Music First Listen, a major accomplishment for any artist of any genre, where fans get an early listen to Meat and Candy leading up to its release on Friday, Nov. 6. Surrounding the First Listen, NPR says that “Contemporary country music has gotten an especially bad rap in recent years, routinely dismissed by outside observers as mindless, artless, suburban party fare. If ever there was a band equipped to challenge those characterizations, it’s Old Dominion.”
Old Dominion will attend the ASCAP Country Awards tonight (Nov. 2) and the 49th Annual CMA Awards on Wednesday (Nov. 4) before heading on the road into the release of Meat and Candy (Nov. 6).
