Casey Barnes To Drop New Song ‘Mayday’ Before CMC Rocks

Casey Barnes has announced his first release for 2024, a “massive festival type anthem” called Mayday.

The track was announced Yesterday (March 4) in a post that Barnes shared on Facebook, confirming that fans can expect to stream Mayday next Tuesday (March 12).

Touching on the single’s backstory, Barnes explained that the seeds for it were sewn towards the end of 2023, when he was in Nashville to work on his upcoming fifth studio album (which is yet to be announced, but apparently will be “VERY soon”). During the trip, he was presented with the opportunity to share a writing session with fellow Aussie country star Morgan Evans, who he describes as an “absolute legend”.

“We’d talked about it for a while,” Barnes explained, noting that he wound up in the studio with both Evans and another local stalwart, Danielle Blakey. He also noted that he “pulled in all the big guns on this song”, shouting out his “mates at Msquared” as well as mixer Andrew Maury (whose portfolio features such international heavyweights as Kacey Musgraves, Shawn Mendes and Lizzo).

Barnes said of his vision for Mayday: “I was after a massive festival type anthem that was going to be a big single on the album but also perfect for our live show.” You can pre-save the single here.

The release comes right in time for this year’s CMC Rocks festival, which kicks off next Friday (March 15) at the Willowbank Raceway in Ipswich. There, Barnes will rub shoulders with some of the biggest and brightest names in modern country music: it’s headlined by Lainey Wilson, Tyler Hubbard and Chris Young, with other standouts including internationals like Chase Rice, Nate Smith, Megan Moroney and Morgan Wade, and locals like Brad Cox, Taylor Moss, Melanie Dyer and Sara Berki. Head here for more info on the whole lineup.

Mayday follows on from the quadrant of singles Barnes released throughout 2023. He kicked the year off by dropping Summer Nights in February, then followed it up with Boys Like Me in May, Never Give Up On A Good Time in September, and Miracles – the current #1 song on the Countrytown Hot 50 chart – in November.

Amongst it all, Barnes was honoured with the the People’s Choice Award at last year’s Groundwater Country Music Festival. A few months later, at this year’s Tamworth Country Music Festival, he was presented with his first-ever ARIA Gold Record (which he earned at the hand of his 2022 single God Took His Time On You).

In other news, Barnes recently detailed a terrifying car accident that he and his daughter Charli were in last month, telling fans they were lucky to walk away from the incident without more severe injuries. Even more daunting for the country star, it came right off the back of a cancer scare.