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    • Carrie Underwood and HARDY to Perform in NBC Special
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    Carrie Underwood and HARDY to Perform in NBC Special

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    NBC’s “Toby Keith: American Icon” spotlights the late country legend’s impact on Music City and beyond.

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    Country stars Luke Bryan and Lainey Wilson celebrated Toby Keith during a two-hour NBC special now streaming on Peacock.

    “Toby Keith: American Icon” — a two-hour NBC special taped in Nashville in July — honored the artist, who died Feb. 5 after a nearly 20-month battle with stomach cancer.

    Artists performing at the event include Carrie Underwood (“A Little Less Talk and a Lot More Action”), Eric Church (“As Good as I Once Was”), Brantley Gilbert and HARDY (collaborating on “How Do You Like Me Now?!”), Riley Green and Ella Langley (“Who’s Your Daddy?”) and Ashley McBryde (“Wish I Didn’t Know Now”).

    In a rare appearance donning a black cowboy hat, Luke Bryan sang “Should’ve Been a Cowboy.” Lainey Wilson rode her “Yellowstone” horse, Cowboy, onto the stage to join Jamey Johnson for “Beer for My Horses.” Darius Rucker joined for “God Love Her,” Jordan Davis and Clay Walker paired up for “I Love This Bar” and Tyler Hubbard joined Jelly Roll, HARDY, Jordan Davis, songwriters Jim and Brett Beavers and the Warren Brothers for “Red Solo Cup.”

    Keith’s Lasting Legacy

    The atmosphere at the event showed that Keith was not only a 20-time country music chart-topper, entertainer, proud patriot and supporter of the US military.

    Instead, it was worth looking back at a key turning point a decade into his career, when he became even more focused on his vision as a creator and his savvy entrepreneur, which paid off in incredible ways.

    This year would have seen Keith enter the fourth decade of his mainstream country career. Two decades earlier, Keith had capitalized on the power of his influence on American pop culture.

    Country music, Nashville as the center of that industry, and the rest of the country have not yet recovered.

    How to watch the Toby Keith special

    The show first aired on NBC on August 28. It is now available to stream on Peacock.

    A lucrative artist-as-brand

    Between June 2002 and December 2004, Keith sold more than 20 million albums and singles combined. The key was the 2002 post-9/11 anthem “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (the Angry American).” However, the record’s B-side, “Who’s Your Daddy,” also achieved chart-topping status.

    The combination of honky-tonk zydeco funk, rockabilly and R&B grooves brought Keith’s successful 1990s country album back to life.

    Add to that the Western elements and outlaw vibes of “Beer for My Horses,” plus a power ballad that doubles down on patriotism on “American Soldier.” The combined impact of those songs alone, sonically and stylistically, establishes Keith as a symbol not only of country success, but of the most beloved, unforgettable parts of the mythology surrounding late 20th century American exceptionalism.

    Ultimately, that success made him as lucrative an American music brand as Bon Jovi or Madonna by the early 2000s.

    By 2010, Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill bar and restaurant concept, launched in June 2005 and named after his 2003 single “I Love This Bar,” had already franchised to more than half a dozen locations in airports, casinos and shopping malls across the country.

    The restaurant tripled its opening month revenue goal and quickly became one of America’s top 50 highest grossing restaurants. According to Forbes, Keith initially earned $12 million a year from his restaurants through licensing agreements that included a name and a share of restaurant revenue.

    Speaking about the opening of a 20,000-square-foot dining and entertainment venue with an 85-foot guitar bar in Phoenix in 2009, one of the attendees, Norma Ross, told Metromix Phoenix that Keith “made her butter melt.”

    “He’s not fake or pretentious.”

    Nashville’s Lower Broadway reflects Keith’s legacy

    After struggling financially between 2014 and 2020, only two I Love This Bar and Grill locations remain open in Oklahoma.

    However, in 2013, Forbes estimated that Keith never earned less than $48 million a year and that his total fortune was more than $500 million.

    Keith’s development of an ‘unpretentious’ brand, driven by so much wealth, can be compared to Nashville’s modern-day Lower Broadway.

    By 2025, the names of 17 country music stars, from Hank Williams Jr., Alan Jackson and Garth Brooks to Jason Aldean, Eric Church and Miranda Lambert, plus Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen and Lainey Wilson, will be plastered on bars along Lower Broadway.

    In 2023, 15 million tourists, many of whom are drawn to popular destinations like those mentioned above, spent more than $300 million in Davidson County.

    To grow that income, In many ways, the June Music City Strategic Plan, released by the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp., will continue to reflect Keith’s successful plan to become a leader in the tourism industry, as nearly two dozen star bars have already achieved.

    As for Nashville’s growth potential, when viewed under the guidance of Keith’s legacy, a quote from his longtime producer, James Stroud, says it best: “Toby is his own man. He knows what he wants to say and what the people want to hear.”

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