Lexington, KY · country · southern soul

Chris Stapleton

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A songwriter's songwriter with a howl that turns Nashville craft into something closer to Muscle Shoals soul — 'Tennessee Whiskey' just the entry point of a stacked catalog.

Chris Stapleton was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1978. He moved to Nashville in 1996 to study engineering at Vanderbilt University, switched to business school, then dropped out once he learned songwriting itself could be a career, signing with the publisher Sea Gayle Music. He spent years there as a working songwriter before becoming known as a performer in his own right.

Stapleton placed songs with country artists across the mainstream, co-writing six number-one hits including Kenny Chesney's "Never Wanted Nothing More," Josh Turner's "Your Man," George Strait's "Love's Gonna Make It Alright," and Luke Bryan's "Drink a Beer." He has also been credited on records by Adele, Kelly Clarkson, Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley, Taylor Swift, SZA, Kehlani, Sheryl Crow, and Ed Sheeran. Before going solo he fronted the bluegrass-leaning SteelDrivers and the rock band the Jompson Brothers.

His solo work pairs a heavy, blues-inflected voice with arrangements that lean on guitar, organ and a rhythm section rather than contemporary country production. He draws as much on Southern soul and rock as on honky-tonk, and his reading of Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove's "Tennessee Whiskey" became the song most listeners associate with him.

His breakthrough as a solo artist came with 2015's Traveller, which topped the Billboard 200 and went septuple platinum; "Tennessee Whiskey" itself was certified diamond. Follow-ups From A Room: Volume 1 and Volume 2, both released in 2017, brought a CMA Album of the Year and a Grammy for Best Country Album, while Starting Over in 2020 earned him a third Grammy in that category.

Stapleton has won eleven Grammy Awards, eleven ACM Awards and fifteen CMA Awards, and was named the ACM's Artist-Songwriter of the Decade in 2019. He tours with a small band that regularly includes his wife, Morgane Stapleton, on harmony vocals.

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countrysouthern soul