MacKenzie Porter Caps Huge 2019 with These Days Hitting #1
MacKenzie Porter‘s path has been different than most country music stars, but after the results of 2019, it’s impossible to argue that it isn’t working for her.
But before we get too deep into this year, we have to take a look back to late-2018 when Porter started the movement that got her to where she sits right now.
After successful acting turns on both Travelers and Hell On Wheels, the Alberta native set her sights back on music and at the end of November 2018, she released About You and Drive Thru, her first new music since 2016 when she appeared on Chris Lane’s Circles and her first single since 2015’s Rodeo. We talked to her about the release of those songs and her transition back into country music, and while there’s no predicting exactly what would come in the next year, she was most definitely excited.
Related: About You & Drive Thru – MacKenzie Porter Interview
What she did know was that with her team at Big Loud, she had put together a plan to release new music, reintroduce MacKenzie Porter to country music listeners, and go from there.
And that brought us to 2019.
About You and Drive Thru started gaining traction, everything was going according to plan, and they moved forward to the next step.
On March 22, 2019, MacKenzie Porter released five new songs: These Days, Cry Baby, If It Ain’t Broke, One More Whiskey Song, and 24/7/365.
Fans started discovering the new songs, MacKenzie started getting ready for her summer, About You kept moving forward, and then, the first HUGE moment of 2019.
In late-May, MacKenzie Porter went all the way to #1 on the Billboard Canadian Country Music Airplay Charts for the very first time with About You. It’s a significant moment in any artist’s career to get to the top of the chart and doubly significant when they get there for the first time. And you can add another layer to that because as a Canadian female artist, getting to the peak of the country music chart mountain does not happen very often.
Note: Also in May, MacKenzie Porter and Jake Etheridge announced their engagement. We think it’s safe to call that a highlight of her year as well!
For a lot of artists, that would be enough to make it a career year no matter what else happened. For MacKenzie Porter, the year wasn’t even half over, and there was still a lot left to do.
At the end of June, MacKenzie played in Calgary at Cowboys Dance Hall’s 23rd birthday party, in July she made the trip to PEI to play the Cavendish Beach Music Festival, and in August she played at the Big Valley Jamboree and then the Boots & Hearts Music Festival, where we saw her on the Front Porch Stage.
On Sunday afternoon, we watched as Porter took the stage with her band and ripped through a set of her new material and a couple of fun covers as people sang along with the songs they knew and danced at the tent-covered stage. It was only eight songs, but we loved it and it was our first chance since Boots & Hearts 2013 to see her sing and play the fiddle and entertain a crowd.
On that stage, MacKenzie Porter was energetic and excited. She was smooth and fun. She got a group of country music fans to move back and forth between her own songs and smashes including Alanis Morrisette’s Hand In My Pocket and Whitney Houston’s I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me). It was the performance we were hoping for (though I did wish for a couple of the older songs) and a sign of what we hope we’ll see more of in the future.
Related: MacKenzie Porter at Boots and Hearts 2019
A few weeks later, MacKenzie hit the road with Dean Brody and Dallas Smith on the Friends Don’t Let Friends Tour Alone run of shows. As a special guest (along with Chad Brownlee), she joined the show in the middle of the headlining set to sing for the country music fans on 30 Canadian tour stops.
We were at the Toronto show at the Budweiser Stage on September 21, and got to see MacKenzie duet with Dean Brody on Bounty, and then duet later in the show with Dallas Smith on One Drink Ago. She also sang These Days, giving the crowds a little something of her own in the middle of an all-star show.
She came out one more time at the end of the night to sing Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink Alone, the song she was featured on with Brody and Smith and that helped give the tour its name. It was a great end to the show, a great way to give the fans in attendance one more chance to see and hear her. And like we said before, you can’t argue with results.
Related: Dean Brody, Dallas Smith and the Friends Don’t Let Friends Tour Alone in Toronto!
In the three months since we saw MacKenzie Porter on stage in Toronto, her momentum hasn’t really slowed down at all. The tour continued with more shows until the end of October. She found herself added to big streaming playlists. She was announced as part of Chris Lane’s upcoming winter 2020 Big Big Plans Tour where she’ll play 19 dates in January and February.
And then, on Monday, December 16, 2019, MacKenzie Porter got all the way to the top again when These Days took over the #1 spot on the Mediabase Canada and Billboard Canada Country Airplay charts!
Everything we said earlier about getting to #1 being significant holds true here. And just like earlier, we’ll add another layer because for the first time since Shania Twain did it more than 20 years ago, MacKenzie Porter went to the top with back-to-back singles as a Canadian female country artist.
It’s a big accomplishment and a big deal, and she knows it. In a press release, MacKenzie said, “I am unbelievably grateful that Canadian country radio has embraced my music in such a massive way. It doesn’t even feel real to have my name in the same sentence as Shania Twain! Thank you to everyone who took a chance on me – from my incredible team to every fan who has requested a song and every radio programmer that’s played it – I love every single one of you. Canadian country radio you have completely rocked my world!”
With the holidays just around the corner, we hope that this news is a big part of MacKenzie’s celebrations with friends and family. She’s earned it.
And as 2019 winds down, we find ourselves in mostly the same spot as we did at the end of 2018. We know a little bit about MacKenzie Porter’s plans for the new year (touring with Chris Lane, performing at no fewer than six festivals this summer), but there’s a lot we don’t know. Will there be new music and a new single, or her own tour? We can’t wait to find out.
Congratulations to MacKenzie Porter and her team on a HUGE 2019. It looks like you’ve found the start of something special.
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