For the fourth consecutive year, CBS’ New Year’s Eve festivities blended with a live concert aided by a music note drop and fireworks at the stroke of midnight at Nashville’s Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park.
Moreso than most things regarding Music City and popular culture, the six-hour event felt like the closest thing to being entirely comfortable with having the most dominant guiding hand over the broadest swath of America’s entertainment and social desires.
To wit, Metro Nashville Police Department and event officials estimated that a record crowd of approximately 220,000 revelers attended the Jack Daniel’s-sponsored “New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash” festivities.
Part of the two percent growth in attendance from 2023 fell on event headliner and Nashville native Jelly Roll.
The Grammy-nominated performer’s headlining set blended the best parts of his 2024 success, including his over four-dozen-date “Beautifully Broken” tour across North America, performing a mid-set homage to hip-hop classics at CMA Fest and becoming something of a world-renowned pitchman selling the spiritual power of redemptive salvation.
The live crowd’s response of chanting “Jelly Jelly Jelly” at the top of their lungs at multiple moments during the evening highlighted that his superstar evolution is complete.
Performers Kane Brown and Shaboozey appeared initially overwhelmed by, then eventually grateful to, the overflowing crowd in downtown Nashville.
Brown’s set highlighted how amazingly, though 31 and seemingly a stalwart of Nashville’s modern-era mainstream country community, he’s also matured while arriving at year 10 of being in a “10-year-town.”
Supported by a backing band that sounded tighter than ever — likely due to the “Like I Love Country Music” performer’s frenetic tour schedule — he whipped the crowd into so much of a frenzy that during a break in Brown’s live set, he signed a fan’s cast for her broken arm upon request.
He also welcomed his wife, Katelyn Brown, mother of his three children and 2023 “Thank God” duet partner, to the stage to perform their new, Latin-tinged pop track, “Body Talk.”
Insofar as Shaboozey, the Virginia native whose single “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” spent five months of 2024 on top of Billboard’s Country Sales and all-genre Hot 100 charts, has expanded from headlining at the Basement East in May to playing for 10x, then 100x as many people only two weeks after that show. He closed the year significantly eclipsing that standard at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park.
At a point in “Tipsy”‘s second chorus, Shaboozey’s eyes watered and his cheeks flushed in bemused astonishment at having a crowd whose population equaled one-third of Nashville’s total population singing along with as much unbridled joy as he had in his voice for his mega-hit.
Also notable was televised event co-host Keith Urban, who kicked off the evening with his new album “HIGH”‘s “Straight Line” and radio hit “Messed Up As Me.” He also welcomed rising star performer Alana Springsteen to perform Lainey Wilson’s verse on the friendship-driven party anthem “GO HOME W U.”
Also, fresh from sharing the stage with Beyonce during a Netflix-broadcasted NFL halftime concert on Christmas Day, Brittney Spencer performed the track “I Got Time” from her “My Stupid Life” album to a warm reception.
The evening’s lineup, though not as directly specific to a vibe or style as 2023’s Southern rock-friendly bill of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Lainey Wilson, Elle King, Grace Bowers and Jackson Dean, did tip a hat to the breadth of country’s cultural reach in 2025.
“Nashville’s (surge is allowing artists like me) to quickly achieve success and cross opportunities and places off the list, offered the 24-year-old vocalist who collaborated with Chris Stapleton on her critically-acclaimed 2023 track “Ghost In My Guitar.”
2025 finds her on the road with her “Big Bash” collaborator Urban. This follows a two-year swing that’s seen her debut at the Grand Ole Opry and Ryman Auditorium, perform at Nissan Stadium during CMA Fest, achieve an NPR Tiny Desk special, plus tour with name-brand country chart-toppers like Luke Bryan and Tyler Hubbard.
“Artists and storytellers following in their heroes’ footsteps is a tradition continuing for another generation. However, the opportunity for (growing in stardom in country’s moment) is currently allowing artists like myself to have the most fun while reaching for a bar that is set higher every day.”
‘I Am Not Okay’
The evening closed with the first continuance of a potential musical tradition at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park’s end-of-year festivities.
Jelly Roll on Tuesday night and Lynyrd Skynyrd a year prior included performances of “Simple Man” — the latter’s 1973 classic — in their set. Jelly Roll’s version has been familiar to his work for years. However, when cast into what his career as a gospel blues-belting crooner is becoming, it takes on a morally admirable vibe that allows the listener to reflect on and resolve “troubles (that have) come and pass” in the past year.
In Dec. 2023, Skynyrd’s Rickey Medlocke and Johnny Van Zant offered to The Tennessean that the band’s legacy was defined by something of the same “dirty, hot, gritty and grungy” aesthetic that Jelly Roll has long considered a part of his existence, too.
“Our iconic songs also haven’t failed in helping our fans through their lives,” Medlocke added.
On a night driven by resolutions, Jelly Roll’s headlining New Year’s Eve set was moreso a celebration of 220,000 people getting to the finish line at the close of the year with the aid of not Jelly Roll, the rapper or country singer, but rather by the next chapter of the award-winner’s career — that of developing into a folk hero — taking its most profound form yet.
As he poignantly sang onstage from his latest chart-topping hit, “I’m not okay / But it’s all gonna be alright / It’s not okay / But we’re all gonna be alright.”
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Jelly Roll, Keith Urban, more bring heartwarming 2024 close to Nashville’s NYE festivities…Read more by Marcus K. Dowling, Nashville Tennessean
