Chris Stapleton
Chris Stapleton
Christopher Alvin "Chris" Stapletonis an American country and bluegrass musician and songwriter. He is an established songwriter with six number-one songs including the five-week number-one "Never Wanted Nothing More" recorded by Kenny Chesney, "Love's Gonna Make It Alright" recorded by George Strait, and "Come Back Song" recorded by Darius Rucker. As a songwriter, over 150 of Stapleton's songs have appeared on albums by such artists as Adele, Luke Bryan, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and Dierks Bentley. He has co-written with...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSongwriter
Date of Birth15 April 1978
CountryUnited States of America
A lot of great bluegrass comes out of Kentucky. There's a lot of great music, like the Judds, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ricky Skaggs, and Keith Whitley. There's a lot of bluegrass intertwined with country music.
As long as people are buying music, it's good for everybody.
I think the path is different for everybody. Go after the doors that are open to you. That has always been my motto getting into the music business. Do the things that seem to be good opportunities and work hard at it. Try to make good decisions and be nice. Hopefully all of that will pay off at some point.
I was born in Fayette County, over in Lexington, Kentucky, but I was raised most of my life in Paintsville.
It is a really interesting to hear yourself on the radio. I've gotten to hear myself in different capacities. I've heard myself on Sirius XM on the bluegrass channels, and on WSM and other places.
I write the songs and hand it over to the world and see what happens. But the things that I've written for people that have been hits, I don't know that I would have directed them in the right path, but they definitely wound up on the right path.
I went to college a little bit, and that didn't work out, and I didn't finish. So, I would play in bars until I ran out of money, and then I'd get a real job.
I always just try to write the best songs that I can at any given time, and sometimes those songs are for me, and sometimes they're for other people. And that's to be evaluated after the fact.
I always tell people, 'The music's free. I get paid to travel.'
I just try to make the best music that I can. People are going to label it whatever they're going to label it.
Anytime that another artist or a critic that is well-respected says something nice about you, you're always thankful and hope that you can live up to that.
I grew up in eastern Kentucky, and we would sing in the churches, and there's lots of good mountain church singers out there. Like a lot of folks who turn out to be secular music artists, that's a lot of the training you put in, whether you know it or not.
In the kind of fast-food world that we live in, where everything's so fast paced and it's, 'Look over here! Look over there,' we don't really take the time to sit down and enjoy music - or anything else, for that matter.
I like to put something on and want to listen to it again once I get done listening to it, not feel like I need an ear break.