Chris Stapleton

Christopher Alvin Stapleton was born on 15 April 1978 in Lexington, Kentucky, and grew up in Staffordsville, a small town near Paintsville, in a family of coal miners. After graduating from Johnson Central High School he moved to Nashville in 1996 to study engineering at Vanderbilt University, but on learning that songwriting could be a salaried job he left to write songs instead. He signed with the publisher Sea Gayle Music and over the next ten years wrote more than a thousand songs. Josh Turner’s “Your Man,” written with Chris DuBois and Jace Everett, became a number one on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart early in 2006, and “Never Wanted Nothing More,” written with the bluegrass singer Ronnie Bowman, topped the same chart for Kenny Chesney in 2007. Lee Ann Womack recorded his “Either Way” on Call Me Crazy (2008), Darius Rucker released “Come Back Song,” written with Rucker and Casey Beathard, in July 2010, George Strait released “Love’s Gonna Make It Alright,” written with Al Anderson, in November 2011, and Luke Bryan’s “Drink a Beer,” written with Jim Beavers, reached number one on the Country Airplay chart in February 2014.

The SteelDrivers, a Nashville band that made its debut in 2005, brought him to bluegrass audiences. The first lineup had Stapleton on guitar and lead vocals, Mike Henderson on mandolin, Tammy Rogers on fiddle, Richard Bailey on banjo and Mike Fleming on bass, and by November 2006 they were recording live at the Station Inn. Rounder signed them in April 2007, and their first album, The SteelDrivers, came out on 15 January 2008. Stapleton had a hand in all eleven of its songs: eight he wrote with Henderson, among them “Blue Side of the Mountain,” “Drinkin’ Dark Whiskey,” “If It Hadn’t Been for Love” and “East Kentucky Home,” while “Midnight Tears” was written with Jerry Salley, “Hear the Willow Cry” with Liz Hengberg and “Heaven Sent” with Kevin Welch. “Blue Side of the Mountain” was nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, and the IBMA named the band Emerging Artist of the Year in 2009. In April 2010 Stapleton announced that he was leaving, and Gary Nichols took over the lead vocals, but he is on the band’s second album, Reckless (7 September 2010), whose “Where Rainbows Never Die,” another Henderson and Stapleton song, and the album itself brought two more Grammy nominations.

Alongside the SteelDrivers he had formed a rock band in Nashville in 2007, the Jompson Brothers, with Greg McKee on lead guitar, J.T. Cure on bass and Bard McNamee on drums. After he left the SteelDrivers they toured regularly in the Southeast, played the Zac Brown Band’s Sailing Southern Ground cruise in September 2010, and released a self-titled album independently that November.

Signed to Mercury Nashville as a solo artist in 2013, he released a first single, “What Are You Listening To?,” that year. Traveller, released on 5 May 2015, was produced by Stapleton and Dave Cobb at RCA Studio A in Nashville, with Stapleton singing and playing guitar alongside J.T. Cure on bass, Derek Mixon on drums, Robby Turner on pedal steel and Mickey Raphael on harmonica, and his wife, Morgane Stapleton, singing harmony. At the CMA Awards that November it won Album of the Year, and Stapleton was named Male Vocalist and New Artist of the Year. On the broadcast he sang “Tennessee Whiskey” with Justin Timberlake. The song, written by Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove, had first been recorded by David Allan Coe in 1981 and reached number two for George Jones in 1983; Stapleton’s version from Traveller went to number one on Hot Country Songs, Traveller rose to number one on the Billboard 200, and in January 2026 the RIAA certified his recording double diamond. At the Grammy Awards in February 2016 Traveller won Best Country Album and was nominated for Album of the Year, and its title song won Best Country Solo Performance. “Nobody to Blame,” written with Barry Bales and Ronnie Bowman, became his first top-ten single on the Country Airplay chart and won the Academy of Country Music’s Song of the Year.

He recorded the two volumes of From A Room at RCA Studio A; Volume 1 came out on 5 May 2017 and Volume 2 on 1 December 2017, and both debuted at number two on the Billboard 200. Volume 1 included “Either Way” and “Broken Halos,” written with Mike Henderson, which in March 2018 became his first number one on the Country Airplay chart. At the 2018 Grammys Volume 1 won Best Country Album, “Either Way” Best Country Solo Performance and “Broken Halos” Best Country Song; the CMA named Volume 1 Album of the Year in 2017 and “Broken Halos” Single and Song of the Year in 2018. He also co-wrote three songs for Timberlake’s Man of the Woods (2018), including their duet “Say Something,” a top-ten hit on the Billboard Hot 100, and in September 2019 the Academy of Country Music named him its Artist-Songwriter of the Decade.

Starting Over (13 November 2020), produced with Cobb, drew on songs by Henderson, Guy and Susanna Clark and John Fogerty, and had Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers among the players. At the 2021 CMA Awards it won Album of the Year and its title song Single and Song of the Year, and at the 2022 Grammys it won Best Country Album, with “You Should Probably Leave” taking Best Country Solo Performance and “Cold” Best Country Song. At the 2022 Academy of Country Music Awards he sang “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” with Patty Loveless, and on 12 February 2023 he sang the national anthem at Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Arizona.

Higher came out on Mercury Nashville on 10 November 2023, produced by Cobb with Chris and Morgane Stapleton at RCA Studio A. Its lead single, “White Horse,” written with Dan Wilson, won Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance at the 2024 Grammys and Single and Song of the Year at the 2024 CMA Awards. He won Best Country Solo Performance again in 2025 with “It Takes a Woman” and in February 2026 with “Bad As I Used To Be,” from the film F1. His eight CMA Male Vocalist awards came in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.