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
I like to put a record on and then listen to it again and then sit down and make my friends listen to it.
I like things that don't sound particularly processed or mechanical or made by machines. I like music that contains human elements, with all their flaws. There's air in it, and you can hear a room of a bunch of guys playing. Those are the magic parts.
If I'm feeling like rock, we'll do some of that, and if I'm feeling some other way, we might do some of that. So, that's typically how I record and write and play music and anything else.
I don't try to approach things any differently, songwriting-wise, regardless of what I'm doing. I try to write whatever the best thing is that I'm doing that day. If I'm working on a pop song, I'm working on a pop song to the best of my ability. If I'm working on a bluegrass song, it's the same thing. They're not really different parts of the brain.
Lyrically, 'less words mean more' is a pretty good rule of thumb. Try to cut out the fat and get to the meat of what you're saying.
I don't look at family and what I do for a living as separate things. They're all kind of one thing, and this is part of their life just like it's part of mine.
I never was a liner note junkie. I didn't know who produced records or there was such a thing as a straight songwriter. I always assumed that everybody that was singing a song wrote it or made it up.
I'm not a hustler. I don't pitch songs. I don't ask people to write with me. It's not what I do.
I like songs that make me feel tough. Like 'Back in Black.' You want to hear it again and get in a fight.
The goal is always just to write the best song that you can write. I mean, the process for writing a song is the process for writing a song. It's not something I look at it as something I need to do something different.
I'm a fan of polarization. If you make something that is palatable to everybody, it's like making vanilla ice cream, and I think we have enough of that.