LOS ANGELES, CA (May 1, 2016) – As Maddie & Tae were finishing their acceptance speech for Favorite Country Artist at the 2016 Radio Disney Music Awards and preparing to leave the stage, a funny thing happened. The presenter said, “Wait a minute… We think you have won another award,” then opened the envelope to find out that their Top 10 hit “Fly” was Favorite Country Song.

With over 238 million votes cast by a worldwide voting pool via five different social media and digital platforms, the Radio Disney Music Awards don’t just represent the heart of Young America, they measure the global youthquake that is a culture unto itself. For the Ada, Oklahoman and Sugarland, Texan, who caused a sensation at this year’s C2C Festival in London, the awards struck a real chord.

“When you write songs, you want to believe they touch people,” says Tae Dye. “You send them out; you never truly know. And then you have whole audiences singing ‘Fly’ back to you, and you realize what you wrote to encourage yourself was something a lot of other people were feeling or wanting to hear, too.”

Maddie Marlow concurs, “You have this fairy tale of ‘life on your own.’ It’s so awesome. Until the apartment floods, or something happens and your go-to people aren’t there. But dreams only happen if you go out to get them. Radio Disney and this award remind both of us that what seemed so personal, so ‘how are we going to get through this?!’ is incredibly universal – literally all around the world! For ‘Fly’ to be recognized like this? It’s crazy, and awesome, and wow!”

With the 2015 Country Music Association Video of the Year Award for the wildly viral, gender-flipping “Girl In A Country Song” already on their mantle, hard country’s platinum blonds’ roots-strong, high-powered acoustic sound continues making in-roads into people’s lives. Like Loretta Lynn, Patty Loveless and the Dixie Chicks before them, Maddie & Tae represent truth-telling young women who are feminine and can more than excavate the doubts, snags and euphoria of coming of age in the real world.

The award-winning songwriters – most recently receiving the coveted Ten Songs I’d Wish I’d Written from the Nashville Songwriters Association International – have built a career from being an authentic voice for young people, dreamers and seekers. Not afraid to embrace vulnerability, NPR also singled out “Fly” as one of their 2015 Songs We Love – and START HERE was one of the Top 10 Country Albums of 2015 in the prestigious Nashville Scene Country Music Critics’ Poll.

“Radio Disney is the greatest.” Marlow gushed. “As a place where young people can come together, have a place to hear music that doesn’t think about genre or whatever, it’s an amazing place to have a home! Tae and I were so psyched when ‘Fly’ started playing… and this is even cooler, because it says our song touched everyone listening.”

“We wrote ‘Fly’ to help us keep the faith when we were unsure,” Dye adds. “If these votes meant it helped even some of the voters, then that’s everything we can hope for our music.”

Only the third female duo in Billboard Country Singles chart history to have their first single hit #1, Maddie & Tae’s country goes where country rarely does. They have also been featured in Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, Teen Vogue and Rolling Stone to USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Teen Vogue and NPR.