Dallas Music Wrapped: The Year 2023 in Numbers

It’s been yet another bustling year for music lovers in North Texas. And it's no surprise, mathematically, that as Dallas-Fort Worth's population grows, the area solidifies its tradition as a major music town by widening audiences and producing new talent.

With entertainment complexes bursting into suburbs that some locals haven’t even heard of, artists becoming omnipresent on TikTok and streaming platforms, major concerts from titans such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé — and the equally powerful presence of Pussy Riot, who played to a small crowd in Fort Worth’s Tulips in November — plus the endless tunes rumbling into the nightlife, our senses were overstimulated.

Many of Dallas’ own artists had a major year. After 16 years in the music business and a path to stardom derailed by a stint in prison, country artist Louie TheSinger found a Dickensian chance at redemption by signing with UMG Nashville.

Vincent Neil Emerson, who’s long been a country-crooning favorite championed by Hollywood star Jason Momoa and contemporaries Leon Bridges and Charley Crockett, honored his Choctaw-Apache ancestry and tussled with the ghosts of trauma with the Shooter Jennings-produced The Golden Crystal Kingdom.

Abraham Alexander has been stealthily ascending through public consciousness for the past few years, finally releasing a full album with 2023’s SEA/SONS, (pronounced “Seasons.” “The slash is silent” the singer said with a laugh in a video).

Alexander’s trajectory from Greek-born son of Nigerian immigrants to a life with adoptive Arlington parents (Alexander’s mother was killed by a drunk driver shortly after moving to the U.S.) has been well told. The album, a blues-tinted rootsy folk masterwork grounded in gospel, shows that, at least musically, Alexander has grown as Texan as a bluebonnet sprouting from a longhorn’s antler, then deep-fried.

The singer has not been flashing in the pan, but rather slow-baking into a mainstay. Unlike the meteoric rise of his friend  Leon Bridges, and much like his friend Charley Crockett — both of whom have strapped him into the passenger seat on their own rise to fame, with spots as a tour opener — Alexander has been methodically conquering audiences through extensive touring and a steady online presence, earning 5.5 million streams this year.

In September, we named Alexander the “Best Soon-to-be Legend” in our Best of Dallas issue. He's among peers in Sea/Sons, which features canorous collabs with Mavis Staples and Gary Clark Jr.

Alexander toured 32 states in 2023 — plus a tour in Europe — and he performed in more than 100 venues. As a victory lap around the old hometown block, he did three nights at The Kessler in the summer, capping off his year elegantly with a concert at the Majestic Theatre.

Indie alt-pop artist Jacks Haupt and R&B darling Muriel, both from Oak Cliff, scorched onstage with Latin pride, while women dominated DJ and radio booths into say-the-safeword submissiveness. Promoter Callie Dee reported she booked 55 shows and produced 100 podcasts, such as her own The Smitten Kitten.

It was also a headline-heavy year for local venues. According to numbers compiled by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, Billy Bob’s Texas in Fort Worth topped the list at a whopping $94 million-plus in sales. On the downside, the city lost three venues, announcing in one week the closing of Lola’s, Downtown Cowtown at the Isis and Twilite Lounge.

Dallas saw the reopening of the historic Longhorn Ballroom with concerts this year from Emmylou Harris, Old 97's and many others, and the closing of Thunderbird Station and the Green Room.

Sadder still, Dallas mourned the loss of local Daniel Jones, a graduate of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts who was Janet Jackson’s musical director and a friend and mentor to many Dallas musicians, and the eccentric Bucks Burnett, who was a record store owner and former manager of Tiny Tim, known by many of our readers for his Namedropper column, in which he recounted his extraordinary anecdotes in the music industry.

For this music issue, we remember those we lost and highlighted some artists you should find, with a Spotify-style wrap of Dallas music by the numbers.