Few states in the U.S. share the type of genre-related loyalty that Mississippi residents have for American country music.
Between current chart-toppers, such as Tennessee native Morgan Wallen and Philadelphia-born artist Michael Wilson Hardy (or Hardy, his stage name), being two of the most popular singers in the Magnolia State at the moment.
Wallen, who has topped the Billboard 200 for months in 2023 in support of his latest album (“One Thing at a Time”), takes the No. 1 spot in Mississippi among the current crop of country stars, while Hardy and Toby Keith round out the top three in the Magnolia State.
BetMississippi.com took a break from Mississippi sports betting updates and utilized Billboard.com’s 2022 Top Country Artists on the year-end charts to develop a list of the Top 50 country music artists. Once obtaining the list, we utilized Google Trends to find the most popular country music artists in the state of Mississippi over the past 12 months (June 2022-June 2023).
Mississippi's Favorite Country Singers
The Top Country Singers in Mississippi
It’s safe to say that Mississippi residents are fond of Wallen’s music, with the Sneedville, Tennessee native scoring a search interest score of 9 overall.
Wallen tripled the next closest artist (Hardy) in the state’s rankings, while Keith, Chris Stapleton, Zach Bryan and Carrie Underwood all had scores of 2 apiece in Mississippi.
Of those six artists, only Hardy hails from Mississippi, with Wallen growing up in neighboring Tennessee, while Keith and Underwood are from Oklahoma, Bryan’s from North Carolina and Stapleton was born in Kentucky.
All have had their share of on-stage success, with Keith reaching the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart 61 times, with 20 No. 1 hits and more than 40 million records sold during his long career.
Stapleton, meanwhile, has taken home 14 Country Music Association awards, to go with 10 Academy of Country Music awards and eight Grammy Awards — while Bryan hit the Billboard 200 with his debut album, “American Heartbreak.”
Still, it seems that Mississippi residents prefer the sound that Wallen is putting out at the moment, with the 30-year-old star securing the No. 1 spot on our list for 2023.
Author
Christopher Boan is a writer at BetMississippi.com specializing in covering state issues. He has covered sports and sports betting in Arizona for more than seven years, including stops at ArizonaSports.com, the Tucson Weekly and the Green Valley News.