Among this year’s CMA Awards nominees, there are a few slightly outside-the-box contenders that may leave the casual listener and maybe even a genre aficionado wondering: “Wait, are they an outlier, or are they really an in-lier?” That isn’t truer of anybody than Stephen Wilson Jr., a best new artist candidate whose two-year-old Big Loud Records debut still has him on the ascent. On the one hand, he just followed that debut up with an EP of grunge-rock covers, which would indicate a left-of-center lean… and on the other, he insists he’s a hardcore Opry lover who desires nothing greater than to become a staple of country radio.
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