Having your first-ever song blow up is nice, but Russell Dickerson says he’s glad that his current hit, “Happen to Me,” didn’t happen to him until now.
“I think about this year a lot, like, what if this was my first song, and [it became] like the biggest [one],” he mused to ABC Audio. The song has become his biggest in several years, as well as a viral smash on TikTok. “I would just be, like, ‘that guy.'”
But Russell has been a chart-topping country star for years now — he scored the first of his many country #1 hits back in 2017.
“It’s so funny to see people comment that don’t know who I am,” he notes. “They’re like, ‘This is all this guy has, is a stupid dance.'”
He laughs, “Like, ‘Actually, no, bro, I got, like, five number ones also.’ … And I mean that in the most humble of ways.”
“I’ve worked my you-know-what off for the last decade to get to where we are now.”
And “where we are now” is “everywhere.” Thanks to “Happen to Me,” Russell has sung on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, headlined a major tour, done a remix with the Jonas Brothers and appeared on multiple TV shows. He’ll also ring in 2026 as one of the performers on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest on Dec. 31.
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