Ryan Gill’s job is to bring together artists – especially from the country music sector – with their own whiskey brand. In recent years he’s done this with Nashville names like Drake White, Michael Ray and the Cadillac Three. But he is increasingly encountering an unusual problem: he can hardly find any artists who drink at all.
“A big part of our job is finding new artists to collaborate with. And I never imagined that the hardest part would be finding artists who still drink,” says Gill, director of marketing and brand development at Three Chords Bourbon, Inc. “This has become a huge obstacle in recent years.”
This trend reflects a nationwide change in alcohol consumption. A Gallup poll from late last summer found that just over half of adults – 54 percent – still drink. That’s four percent less than in 2024. The survey also suggests that members of Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, drink significantly less than the generations before them – which confirms the many reports from bar and club owners that twenty-somethings are simply not into the drinking culture. And because the whiskey supply currently exceeds demand, some renowned distilleries are pausing production. Jim Beam announced that it would suspend distillation operations for all of 2026; George Dickel temporarily closed its Tullahoma, Tennessee, location last fall.
Nashville wonders: What comes after whiskey?
In both songwriting rooms and business meetings around Nashville, some are now wondering whether the changing consumer trend will trickle down to country music, a genre in which songs about alcohol are ubiquitous and stars like Chris Stapleton, Dierks Bentley, Riley Green, Midland, George Strait and Tanya Tucker all have their own liquor brands. Will artists be less interested in printing their face on their own bottle? Will lyrics about whiskey sipping and tequila shooting be replaced by lines about mocktails and gummy bears?
Stapleton, whose recording of “Tennessee Whiskey” recently became the first country song in history to be certified double diamond, doubts that music and alcohol can ever be completely separated.
“As with so many things, cultural norms are cyclical,” says Stapleton. “Maybe drinking isn’t fashionable right now and people are smoking more weed or liking whatever that thing is… but I think these things always have ups and downs.”
Stapleton believes in the drinking songs
At this month’s Super Bowl, Sazerac, the beverage company behind Stapleton’s Traveler Whiskey, ran a well-received commercial for Kentucky Bourbon—underscoring how much it believes in the natural marriage of country and drink. “It doesn’t seem like something that would ever go away in country,” Stapleton says. “If I play a show and don’t play a song about whiskey, I think I’m in a fix.”
But Fred Minnick, whiskey expert and author of the new book “Bottom Shelf: How a Forgotten Brand of Bourbon Saved One Man’s Life,” sees difficulties ahead for artists who want to follow Stapleton and get into the spirits business. The decline in drinkers and the surplus of whiskey – a result of overproduction during the pandemic – are just two of the factors that make launching a new brand particularly challenging.
“It closed the door for new brands. Even someone like Garth Brooks, I don’t think, could launch a brand and keep it going,” Minnick says. “There’s so much work that goes into building a brand. You can’t just put out a whiskey, put it online and ship it to all 50 states. Whiskey is a highly regulated industry that basically takes your fame, slaps it in the face and says, ‘We don’t care.'”
Midland and the Tequila Market
When the country trio Midland introduced their tequila brand Insolito in 2020, they relied on high-quality products in brightly colored bottles. Band member Cameron Duddy says time has played into their hands. “As long as you do good things, whether it’s tequila or music, you’ll prevail,” Duddy says. “But we did it early, and I think we secured a nice starting position in the tequila world.”
Today, however, he would hesitate to enter this fight. “If someone is reading this and is thinking about starting an alcohol business, you would definitely have to look at these numbers and ask, ‘Why?'” Duddy says.
Like Minnick and Gill, Duddy is closely monitoring the downward trend in alcohol consumption. “As someone who is in the business of doing this, it’s disturbing,” he says. “As someone who consumes alcohol myself, it’s also puzzling. I think the more younger generations spend their lives more or less online and indoors, the less reason there is to go out and meet at the bar.”
Cannabis as growing competition
They’re not the only ones observing the move away from alcohol: the cannabis industry is also watching closely. Forrest Dein, co-founder and CMO of Willie’s Remedy, a THC tonic promoted by Willie Nelson, has seen tremendous growth since the drink’s launch less than a year ago. To date, Willie’s Remedy has sold over 400,000 bottles and is the best-selling THC drink online.
“We’ve been in the alcohol business for eight years,” says Dein, who got his start as co-founder of the beverage company JuneShine. “When we launched Willie’s, we weren’t sure how fast it would grow. But within a year it’s five times the size of our alcohol business.”
This is confirmed by a 2022 survey by New Frontier Data, according to which almost 70 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 prefer marijuana to alcohol. Dein also reports from colleagues in the music festival industry who are observing that young concertgoers are purchasing THC seltzers at a similar rate as alcohol-based seltzers, such as the wildly popular White Claw. “This shows me that Gen Z is jumping on this trend,” he says. “But it also transcends generations. We talk to a lot of our customers, and people in their 30s and 40s are drinking Willie’s Remedy with their parents who are in their 70s and 80s.”
Whiskey lyrics are not history yet
The increase in people drinking tonic, chewing gummy bears or smoking is impacting the songs being written in Nashville – but many of the songwriters we spoke to for this article say whiskey and beer lyrics are far from on the decline.
“There are definitely more weed songs, but I still hear sober people writing about drinking all the time. I don’t think it’s going away,” says Aaron Raitiere, who co-wrote hits like Lainey Wilson’s “4x4xU.”
Neil Mason, drummer for the Cadillac Three and writer of hits for Jake Owen and Rascal Flatts, says drinking songs will never go away – even if he doesn’t write as many of them anymore.
Sober, but loyal to the drinking songs
“Drinking songs have always been a big part of country music. In many ways, our band built their career on them,” says Mason. “I write about it less these days because I’ve been sober for four years – but when drinking is part of the story we’re telling, the goal is always the same: stay true to the song, not the trend. It’s a subject I know well, and I don’t avoid it if it serves the truth of the lyric.”
Stapleton admits he doesn’t go to songwriting sessions as often as he did early in his career, but he says he’s never heard anyone pour water on the whiskey songs. “I’ve never been in a room where someone said, ‘You know, I don’t think we should write songs about whiskey anymore.’ “That’s not my experience,” says Stapleton, pointing to younger artists like Zach Top and Ella Langley — both Gen Z members — and their recent success with drinking songs.
Top’s 2024 breakthrough album was titled “Cold Beer & Country Music,” while Langley just became the first female artist to simultaneously land at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts with “Choosin’ Texas,” which features a catchy line about Jack Daniel’s.
Bro country making a comeback?
Raitiere often writes with Langley – he co-wrote her first No. 1 single, the Riley Green duet “You Look Like You Love Me” – and says the theme will always run through the fabric of country music.
“Truck and beer songs are here to stay,” he says. “I think a Bro Country comeback is actually on the horizon.”
Minnick, meanwhile, worries about the decline in whiskey consumption, but draws a historical comparison – with one key difference. “What’s happening to the whiskey industry right now is similar to what happened in the 1960s when the younger generation started reaching for vodka instead of bourbon,” he says. “The difference now is that the younger generation either doesn’t drink at all or prefers to swallow a gummy bear and sit on the sofa.”
As for young country songwriters, Midlands Duddy says they should just write their truth – whether it’s weed or whiskey. “Country music is about pretty everyday things: going to a bar, smoking a joint, fixing your car. That’s why it’s so accessible and honest,” he says. “I just hope they don’t start writing about Fortnite and Minecraft.”
