{"id":2034918,"date":"2025-09-19T17:22:01","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T17:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2034918"},"modified":"2025-09-19T17:22:01","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T17:22:01","slug":"brett-james-died-with-new-wife-her-daughter-in-private-plane-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/brett-james-died-with-new-wife-her-daughter-in-private-plane-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"Brett James died with new wife, her daughter in private plane crash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F2%2F2025%2F09%2Fmusic-tycoon-girlfriend-daughter-crash-comp.jpg?quality%3D90%26strip%3Dall\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Grammy Award-winning country music songwriter Brett James was flying on his private jet with his new wife and her 28-year-old daughter, who had just celebrated her birthday, when the plane crashed and killed them, officials said Friday.<\/p>\n<p>James, 57 \u2014 who wrote songs for Taylor Swift, Dierks Bentley and other stars \u2014 was with girlfriend Melody Wilson, 59, and her daughter, Meryl Maxwell Wilson, on the hitmaker\u2019s Cirrus SR22T when it crashed in an open field in Franklin, North Carolina, Thursday afternoon, according to the Daily Mail.<\/p>\n<p>Wilson, who had lived with James in Nashville since at least 2020, had wished her daughter a happy 28th birthday just one day before the plane went down.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Grammy Award-winning country music songwriter Brett James, his girlfriend Melody Wilson, and her daughter Meryl Maxwell died in a plane crash. <span class=\"credit\">Instagram \/ @melodycarole1<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cHappy Birthday my Love!! How Blessed am I to be your Momma!\u201d she wrote on social media Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u2019re the MOST BEAUTIFUL AMAZING HUMAN inside and out! I\u2019m humbled and grateful everyday for your shining presence in my life!\u201d she added. \u201cNo words can express what a gift you are to me and everyone that KNOWS YOU.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She had also on New Year\u2019s Day 2022 posted pictures of her and James getting married. \u201cWhat an awesome year! August 21st Brett and I got married Lucky me,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Meryl Maxwell Wilson had just celebrated her 28th birthday. <span class=\"credit\">Instagram \/ @melodycarole1<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> <span class=\"credit\">WLOS<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>James, who released five singles that reached Billboard\u2019s country chart over an eight-year period \u2014 including the Carrie Underwood hit \u201cJesus Take The Wheel \u2014 is survived by his four grown children.<\/p>\n<p>He was previously married to Sandra Cornelius-Little, who he shared four kids with.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Grammy Award-winning country music songwriter Brett James was flying on his private jet with his new wife and her 28-year-old daughter, who had just celebrated her birthday, when the plane crashed and killed them, officials said Friday. James, 57 \u2014 who wrote songs for Taylor Swift, Dierks Bentley and other stars \u2014 was with girlfriend [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2034919,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[21741,309691,375607,37798],"class_list":["post-2034918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-entertainment","tag-north-carolina","tag-plane-crashes","tag-us-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Brett-James-died-with-new-wife-her-daughter-in-private.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2034918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2034918\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2034919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2034918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2034918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2034918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}