Cody Johnson plans to celebrate Valentine’s Day weekend at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee, with more than 20,000 valentines.
Johnson, a happily married father of two, is a proud Texas and one of country music’s most fierce performers. He’s headlining Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s just another feather in Johnson’s cowboy hat. He closed 2024 with two No. 3 singles, CMA Album of the Year for Leather, and 8.5 billion career streams.
The Nashville shows are part of the singer’s Leather Deluxe Tour 2025, including tour stops spanning the globe from Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Spark Arena in Auckland, New Zealand.
Johnson predicts he’ll have more confidence on his international this year than when he was still trying to determine if people outside the United States knew his songs. Spoiler alert: They do. The “‘Til You Can’t” singer accompanied Luke Combs to Australia and New Zealand last year, worried it would feel like the first time he played in a bar.
“They knew every word to every song meet and greets were packed,” Johnson said. “I was like, ‘Okay, wow, that blew my mind. I was so taken aback by that. The first time we played there, we were kind of like, ‘Don’t scare ’em off. We didn’t have that same pop about us until we got halfway through the tour.”
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Cody Johnson Shocked to Learn He’s Popular Internationally
He’ll visit England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand on this tour and joked he now knows he can play older setlists if he wants to because many of them have never seen him. However, that isn’t his plan. Johnson has been a professional country singer for nearly two decades, and some of his oldest songs still stream, as well as his newest hits. There’s some trial and error during the shows while he learns what people want to hear from the stage and what they don’t, but he’s dedicated to getting his shows locked in and tight.
“Here’s the issue with putting out a record and having somebody like me where the live show is kind of the focal point of everything,” he explained. “There’s certain stuff that I record, and I think, ‘Man, that’s going to be freaking awesome.’ And then you play it live, and you watch people go grab a beer.”
Johnson admitted to feeling deflated when that happens.
“Then there’ll be the one that you least expected, and you play it live, and it’s just massive,” he said. “You’re like, ‘Well, that has to stay in the set.’”
With 13 new songs on his Leather Deluxe album, Johnson plans to try a few out, see what happens, and react to what his fans want to hear.
“Diamond In My Pocket” or “‘Til You Can’t”?
“The other issue is, I’ve been doing this for 18 years,” he said. “If I show up and play all my new material, everybody’s going to be pissed off that I didn’t play ‘Diamond In My Pocket.’”
He describes it as a 15-year-old song with as much fan demand as “Til You Can’t.”
“I’m Gonna Love You,” his duet with Carrie Underwood, is the lead single from Leather Deluxe Edition, which he released in the fall.
Johnson is friends with songwriter Travis Denning and has known about the song for years through him. Underwood planned to record it at one point, but the heartfelt piano ballad returned to Johnson. Johnson needed a duo partner, and Underwood was the only name on his list.
“Whenever you are working with a star of Carrie’s caliber, there’s a lot of logistics that goes into that as far as timing,” Johnson said. “There was a lot of logistics just to even make sure that we could record the song, period. But I’ve loved this song for a really long time.”
He said a fan response to the song was exactly what he’d imagined.
“I know how big this song is, first before you put me on it and then before you put Carrie on it,” Johnson said. “In my opinion, I feel like it’s big enough that it could even maybe be a pop crossover type song, like a big iconic thing.”
Cody Johnson Promises No Pyro or Crazy Confetti Bombs
Is it a fair bet Johnson will find a way to perform the Underwood duet in Nashville this weekend? You Betcha. As for what else to expect on the setlist – old, new a mixture of both? Johnson said he’s stuck in the middle. But, he promises some changes since his last tour.
“We have a new stage plot,” he said. “We’ve upgraded some of our lighting rigs to kind of facilitate some of the new stage stuff.”
However, there are lines he won’t cross. Johnson promises no pyro or “crazy confetti bombs.”
Tickets for Johnson’s Leather Deluxe Tour 2025 are available here.
(by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)
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