Brothers Osborne Speak Out After Single Is Pulled From Country Radio

The duo’s single “I’m Not For Everyone” reached No. 33 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart.

During Brothers Osborne‘s duo of the year acceptance speech at Monday evening’s (March 7) Academy of Country Music Awards, TJ Osborne was especially grateful for the momentum that an award win can give an artist.

“About a week ago, they pulled our single from country radio, so I needed a little wind put in our sails,” Osborne explained to the audience attending the awards show at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium. Osborne was referring to Brothers Osborne’s radio single, “I’m Not For Everyone,” which reached No. 33 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart dated March 5 and had been on the chart for 43 weeks. It is not on the chart dated March 12. Osborne did not specify if “they” is a reference to the duo’s label home, EMI Records Nashville.

Backstage at the ACM Awards, both John and TJ expounded on that earlier radio comment.

“We kind of keep pushing and trying to persevere and what has kept us going for the past eight years are these [awards],” John told reporters in the press room. “It has kept wind in our sails, not only what it does in terms of the fanbase and the notoriety, but what it does for us as people who keep fighting what we feel like is an uphill battle even when we do win.”

“I mentioned this recently in an article, just with us feeling like we’re underdogs the whole time,” TJ added. “And that’s part of it, is that we don’t get necessarily a lot of the love that some of the other artists do on radio and I’m not necessarily criticizing anyone specifically for that, but it’s just a fact, and to be there tonight, I guess some people were upset that I said that. Like, I said a true statement. I don’t know, our single literally got pulled last week and we just won an award. If you’re upset about that, maybe you’re part of the problem.”

TJ also acknowledged the myriad of ways artists can build careers thanks to new platforms. “As days go on, as we progress and things evolve within the industry, there are a lot more avenues.  To have a lot of success at radio is really amazing and has done a lot of people a lot of good, has changed their lives, but there [is] more than one way to do it. At one point there wasn’t, and now there are a lot of ways. We see people getting successes through winning awards, and our beautiful industry lifting us up, and other people building their careers just via the Internet with no record deals at all, so there are a lot of opportunities for lot of artists and in my own humble opinion, I think that is amazing. I think that’s incredible and a beacon for us in this industry.”

Brothers Osborne’s label did not respond to a request for comment. The duo’s previous Country Airplay radio releases include “Stay a Little Longer,” which reached No. 2, “It Ain’t My Fault” (No. 12), “Burning Man” with Dierks Bentley (No. 2) and more.

Brothers Osborne performed twice during the 2022 ACM Awards ceremony. After performing their song “Skeletons” early in the show, they teamed with Brittney Spencer to close out the ACM Awards with a rendition of “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’.”

Article originally featured on Billboard.