The 2025 inductees of the Country Music Hall of Fame were announced Tuesday, and while they represent wildly different paths and approaches to country music, what they share in common is longevity.
This year’s class is comprised of June Carter Cash, Kenny Chesney and Tony Brown — Brown in the non-performer category, Chesney in the modern era and Cash for the veterans era.
Their careers really couldn’t have looked more different.
Cash hailed from the foundational old-time lineage of the Carter Family, early recording stars of what would come to be known as country music. Later, she held her own alongside her lionized husband and duet partner Johnny Cash, and embodied both Appalachian roots and Nashville country stardom in her own singular fashion right up to her final release, her Wildwood Flower album, the year she passed.
She was also quite the comic.
Chesney scored his first hits in the mid-‘90s, and among his peers, he alone has extended his virtually uninterrupted hit-making across three decades. He’s consistently mounted the biggest stadium tours in country music, with his blend of arena rock energy, rustic imagery and beachside escapism.
Brown, a super producer and former label executive, started out as a southern gospel piano player and a member of Elvis’s backing band.
By the late ‘80s, he was shaping some of country music most successful albums, which are considered definitive entries in the discographies of Reba McEntire, George Strait, Vince Gill, and a slew of other landmark performers.
All three of this year’s inductees have outlasted many of their country music contemporaries, and the two who are still around — Chesney and Brown — are still at it.
Chesney’s got a residency at the Sphere in Vegas, and I was just listening to some new stuff that Brown’s produced for Alabama artist Dee White.