Eric Church + Luke Combs’ Hurricane Benefit Wins Them an Award

Eric Church + Luke Combs’ Hurricane Benefit Wins Them an Award

Luke Combs and Eric Church will share the CRS 2025 Artist Humanitarian Award, an accolade that will be presented to them during the annual Country Radio Seminar conference in Nashville in February.

That award typically goes to just one artist, whose philanthropic contributions stood out in the previous year.

But Church and Combs worked together on a massively impactful project in 2024. That was the Concert for Carolina, a benefit even they planned for Hurricane Helene relief efforts in October.

82,000 fans showed up to see the show at Charlotte, N.C.’s Bank of America Stadium, and more tuned in via livestream to watch big acts including James Taylor, Sheryl Crow, Keith Urban, and of course, Church and Combs.

Read More: How Much Did Luke Combs + Eric Church’s Benefit Raise?

All told, the event raised a whopping $24,513,185 toward hurricane relief efforts. That was a massive contribution to the recovery efforts after the storm, which caused massive damage across multiple states and hit Church and Combs’ shared home state of North Carolina hard.

In a press release announcing that Church and Combs are joint recipients of the Artist Humanitarian Award in 2025, representatives for CRS stressed that the two artists mobilized this enormous event in just 28 days, despite the fact that an effort of this scale would typically take closer to a year to plan.

Combs and Church divided the proceeds, and each picked out causes to serve as beneficiaries of the money. Combs’ portion went to Samaritan’s Purse, Manna Food Bank, Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina and more.

Church’s charitable organization Chief Cares announced a large-scale building project, which initially revealed plans to build 100 homes for hurricane victims in hard-hit Avery County. The singer also pledged a long-term involvement in the region, promising to help revitalize communities through job creation and rebuilding schools.

Church also dedicated a song, “Darkest Hour (Helene Edit),” to hurricane victims. He released the song — which marked his first solo release in three years — in October, earmarking “all of his publishing royalties” to go towards hurricane relief efforts.

Previous recipients of the CRS Artist Humanitarian Award include Kane Brown, Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood and others.

Top 50 Eric Church Songs: His Greatest Hits and Best Deep Cuts

Eric Church’s best song fall into rows. There’s the sullen heartbreakers and the grateful lovers. There are the snarling social statements and buoyant bops. OK, there are only a couple of buoyant bops on this list of Church’s 50 greatest songs, but they exist. 

He’s been known to sample R-Rated burners and sage truth-tellers — and then there are two songs about murder. So, Eric Church’s songs fall into rows, but there are a lot of rows in his 15-year-plus catalog. 

His best song? Taste of Country asked fans, staff and the industry to weigh in and then looked at chart success, sales data pop culture importance to choose No. 1 from No. 50. Songs with strong lyrical content rank high. Songs with creative production rank high. Songs with both ended up in the Top 5. 

Gallery Credit: Billy Dukes

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