People Are Drinking Less Than Ever. What’s Country Music to Do?

empty bottle People Are Drinking Less Than Ever. What’s Country Music to Do? In Nashville, some are wondering how a decline in drinking may affect artists' own liquor brands and the songs they sing. “There are more weed songs for sure," says one songwriter By Joseph Hudak Joseph Hudak Contact Joseph Hudak on X Contact Joseph Hudak by Email View all posts by Joseph Hudak March 1, 2026 It’s Ryan Gill’s job to pair artists, especially those in country music , with their own whiskey brands. Over the last few years, he’s succeeded in setting up Nashville names like Drake White, Michael Ray, and the Cadillac Three with signature lines, but increasingly he’s been encountering a unique problem: locating artists who actually drink. “A lot of our work involves finding new artists to collaborate with. And I never would have guessed that the hardest part would be finding artists that still drink,” Gill, director of marketing and brand development for Three Chords Bourbon, Inc., says. “That’s become a huge hurdle in the last couple years.” The trend is reflective of a nationwide change in alcohol consumption. A Gallup poll released late last summer showed that only a little more than half of adults — 54 percent — were drinking . That’s down four percent from 2024. The poll also suggested that members of Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, were imbibing far less than the generations that preceded them, reinforcing a wealth of anecdotal evidence from bar and club owners that twentysomethings just aren’t enamored of drinking culture . And with whiskey supply in particular currently exceeding demand, some venerable distilleries are pausing production. Jim Beam announced it’d be halting distilling efforts for all of 2026, and George Dickel temporarily closed its Tullahoma, Tennessee, operation last fall. In both songwriting rooms and business meetings around Nashville, some are wondering if the change in consumption behavior will trickle down into country music, where songs abou...