Lady A might be popping a few bottles after their latest single, “Champagne Night,” officially went to No. 1, ascending the Billboard Country Airplay and Mediabase Country charts. The song was Lady A’s winning choice from their episode of Songland and was written by contestant Madeline Merlo with mentor Shane McAnally and Lady A members Hillary Scott, Charles Kelley and Dave Haywood along with Tina Parol, David Thomson, Patricia Conroy, Ryan Tedder and Ester Dean.
“What I love so much about ‘Champagne Night’ is just how the song makes me feel,” Scott previously shared, via The Country Daily. “It’s just so happy and fun and makes me just want to have a great time with people I love.” Haywood added, “When we first heard it on the show, we immediately thought, ‘Oh, we need this for our tour. This needs to be that kind of song that opens the show.’”
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With “Champagne Night,” Merlo became the first winner of Songland to have their selected song released as a radio single, and she is now the first artist to get a No. 1 with their winning song. “They were unbelievable. They were so, so sweet,” Merlo told PopCulture.com of Scott, Kelley and Haywood. “All three of them are songwriters as well too, so presenting the song was super nerve-wracking. Immediately you see all three of them start to get to work, and there’s a moment [on the show]where the three of them just bust out in perfect harmony singing, and I’m about to cry, and it’s so insane. But they were so kind.”
The Canadian singer/songwriter added that Lady A’s decision to take the song to radio was “insane.” “And the way that they kind of announced that is they did it on Zoom with me, and they allowed me to be a part of that,” she shared. “They didn’t need to do that, but they really made me feel like such a part of the crew in that moment. And it was one of the happiest, most beautiful moments in my life, them letting me know that huge news.”
“I think that the whole way it all went down was super serendipitous,” Merlo added. “And no, I really wasn’t expecting to get on the show and then to get paired with Shane [McAnally] who’s literally my hero and one of my favorite songwriters of all time — and then to win, I’ve just been feeling super grateful for the exposure and the knowledge that I obtained through the whole thing.”
