Andrew Orr
A country music competition show that Apple ordered in 2020 will premiere on March 24 on the Apple TV+ platform.
It's called "My Kind of Country," and Apple first ordered the show three years ago, and Reece Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine company produces it.
Apple announced on Friday that the show is a "groundbreaking global search for unconventional and extraordinary country music talent" and will "revolutionize the music competition genre with a fresh, new documentary sensibility."
Country singer-songwriters are joining the series as talent scouts, including 2021's CMA New Artist of the Year Jimmie Allen, four-time Grammy nominee Mickey Guyton and critically acclaimed songwriter and country recording artist and activist Orville Peck.
Witherspoon and Kacey Musgraves executive produce alongside Hello Sunshine's Sara Rea and Lauren Neustadter, Jason Owen from Sandbox Entertainment, Emmy-nominated showrunner Izzie Pick Ibarra ("Dancing with the Stars"), and Katy Mullan from Done + Dusted ("Dear Class of 2020").
Emmy Award-winning Adam Blackstone serves as music director and has previously worked with stars such as Justin Timberlake and Alicia Keys.
Apple TV+ is available on the Apple TV app in over 100 countries and regions on various devices for $6.99 per month. For a limited time, customers who purchase and activate a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Mac, or iPod touch can enjoy three months of Apple TV+ for free.
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
9 Comments
Oh, uh, yeah I know that might be just the thing for some people.
But for me combining country, which I had to listen too growing up and dislike intensely, with an amateur “got talent” type format, which most of the time just proves that no, no they don’t, sounds amazingly painful.
YMMV but no this isn’t for me.
It may or may not suck but I'm totally there for Orville Peck!
If you look at the people behind this - Reese Witherspoon (who has never identified with country music in any way ever in her 30 years in show business) and Kacey Musgraves ... and with Kacey Musgraves, who is primarily known for attacking other country music artists and its fans and the industry itself for predictable reasons, the only one who actually sells records ... and oh yeah Mickey Guyton and Jimmie Allen (who don't sell records) - plus the fact that it is on Apple TV and they are trumpeting it as a "groundbreaking global search for unconventional and extraordinary country music talent" - you can see where they are going with it. About 100 people will watch. All of them in Portland, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. And none of them will be actual country music fans. If anyone talks about it at all, it will be the usual suspects monitoring Facebook for evidence of actual country music fans watching it. Which won't happen, because the venn diagram intersection of "people who like country music" and "people who subscribe to Apple TV" includes basically nobody. If you want to know why that is, take a look at Apple TV programming ... Peanuts aside it is all aimed at a tiny subset of the population.