Since releasing his debut single, “Hurricane,” in 2016, Luke Combs has tallied 19 No. 1 songs on Billboard’s country airplay chart, making him one of the defining country stars of the streaming era. But he reached another echelon with his 2023 cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” Combs’s version reached No. 2 on the all-genre Hot 100 and led to a pure Grammy moment, the pair performing a duet on the awards show — Chapman’s first public performance in nearly a decade.
That was a gentle turn for Combs, a singer indebted to ’90s power-country titans like Brooks & Dunn and Garth Brooks, and whose path was smoothed by earthy belters like Eric Church and Chris Stapleton.
Stapleton’s success, in particular, gave hope to a young Combs, who was uncertain whether he had the look of a country superstar, even if he knew he had the voice. “That gives me an opportunity to be like, OK, well, maybe this guy doesn’t look the part, but maybe people don’t care as much about that anymore,” Combs explained recently in an interview on Popcast, The New York Times culture show.
He’s now, along with Morgan Wallen (and, depending on your definition of the genre, Zach Bryan), the dominant hitmaker in country. But after “Fast Car,” he took a chance by stepping back: He cut down on touring, welcomed a second and third child with his wife and in 2024 released “Fathers & Sons,” a quiet rumination on family that was short on his typical stadium-filling anthems.
Now it’s time to return to the top. “The Way I Am,” Combs’s sixth album, will be released March 20, its opening song and first single setting the rollicking tone: “I’ve been gone for a little too long,” he growls on “Back in the Saddle.”
“I would love to have all the things with this record: hits and big streaming songs and big performances and big awards,” Combs said. “I really do think that’s the goal.”
In his first extended sit-down ahead of the new album, Combs, 35, discussed why healthy competition with singers like Wallen and Bryan means good things for country music; what he’s learned from making political statements in the past; and how body-image issues have affected him throughout his career.
These are edited excerpts from the conversation, which can be watched or listened to in full below.
JOE COSCARELLI Your Tracy Chapman duet at the Grammys was a magical moment, but it also represented a pop-culture breakthrough for the genre. We’re now 10 years on from your debut single, “Hurricane,” and it’s hard to remember, but in 2016, country was not at the place it is now in the mainstream zeitgeist.
LUKE COMBS Country music has always been kind of stigmatized. I remember like, “I listen to everything but country.” That was the popular thing to say in high school or middle school. It was a point of pride.
COSCARELLI I’ve appreciated that you’ve been game to engage in the battle of you and Morgan Wallen fighting at the top for the championship belt. You seem to know that it’s good for the genre.
COMBS Dude, listen, me and Morgan have been on tour together and it feels like everybody but us plays that game. I don’t feel like I’m competing against him. And I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t feel he’s competing against me. The Zach Bryan thing — everybody’s like, well, this guy versus this guy, and picks sides. And I’m like, well, it seems like we’re all kind of doing really well.
JON CARAMANICA What it really speaks to is not just the overall health of country as a genre, but also the fact that it’s now broad enough to sustain multiple peaks at the same time. You, Wallen and Bryan are three only lightly overlapping styles that are all thriving. The ecosystem is a lot bigger.
COMBS If you picked the right Morgan song, the right my song and the right Zach song, played them back-to-back for someone who’d never heard any of us, they’d be like, there’s no way these guys are in the same genre. And I think that’s awesome for country music.
COSCARELLI Can I tell you my favorite quote that I read from you about the new album? “It’s not going to be nothing weird.”
COMBS Sounds like something I’d say.
CARAMANICA Is there a tyranny in needing to chase big singles and being like, if there aren’t five streaming hits, do I have an identity?
COMBS We haven’t done that in a long time. And that was very intentional. “Fathers & Sons,” I say it was an inherently selfish project, truly. I’m kind of at the height of my career and I’m like, “Let’s make this acoustic record about being a dad.” And everyone’s like, [expletive]. [Sighs] Everyone on my team’s like, “Yeah, dude, we love it, it’s so great … you sure you don’t want to do something big?” [laughs]
COSCARELLI One of your great muses throughout your career has been drinking. You’re into your mid-30s now, you’re a dad, you try to eat gluten-free. Beer, obviously not gluten-free. How has your relationship to alcohol changed over the years?
COMBS It hasn’t. Unfortunately. I just love it. I call ’em a stagey — a stage drink, Jack and diet. Or just a cold-ass beer.
I am a guy that drinks at very specific times.
CARAMANICA You’ve mentioned experimenting with intermittent fasting — is it part of that?
COMBS Yeah, so here’s when I drink: I played 20 shows last year. It’s not like we’re playing 100 nights a year. On an average show night, I’m probably having two mixed drinks throughout, and I’m shotgunning a beer. But if I’m at deer camp, which can be like a week, I’m having a mixed drink every night when I get out of the stand, ’cause it’s all my buddies going. When I’m home with my kids and my wife, we don’t drink at all. I’m not a guy that’s going in the fridge every night, getting a beer, having a whiskey. If I didn’t play a show for the whole year and didn’t go to deer camp, I probably wouldn’t drink at all.
COSCARELLI You were one of the artists in country to come forward during the Black Lives Matter moment and speak out. You had been called out for past use of Confederate flag imagery and immediately apologized. Then politics and culture changed. Does that shift away from those sorts of apologies make you regret how you approached these issues in the moment?
COMBS No, I don’t think it would make me do anything different. Me saying that I was not a racist was then people saying, well, then you must be a liberal. And I’m like, I’m not sure those things really are mutual. I would consider myself heavily moderate in everything — I’m not liberal enough for liberals and I’m not conservative enough for conservatives, right? I kind of like it that way.
CARAMANICA To be fair, there are many people who work in your field who simply will not say even that, which is quite striking. In 2021, you did a panel discussing race and country music — most people in your position are scared to do something like that. What made you think someone’s got to step up, maybe it should be me?
COMBS I mean, that was presented to me and I can’t say I jumped at the opportunity. It made me incredibly uncomfortable. I’m not on here to change anybody’s mind or change what country music is or tell anybody who they should vote for, how they should live their lives. But I’m also not afraid to go out and say, hey man, country music is a place where I feel like anyone should be able to come and enjoy the music.
I could stay silent because I don’t want to risk anything. I want people to know that we as a genre care about this issue.
I’m not a guy that feels like I need to push any agenda, right? One, I’m a musician — no one’s calling Donald Trump and asking him how to write a song. No one’s calling AOC and saying, “How do I make my album better?”
CARAMANICA What self-doubts did you face on the way to stardom?
COMBS Definitely my appearance. Like, am I really not gonna get a shot because I’m just a bigger dude? There’s a lot of self-doubt in that department. I knew I could perform as good as anybody, put on a good show and write songs that I felt like people would enjoy. That was one of my biggest fears — maybe I don’t get a shot just because of the way I look. And that was a hard pill to swallow because you can’t really change the way you look.
COSCARELLI Was there a conversation of, “We’re gonna get you a trainer, we’re gonna trim the beard?” Did you ever wake up and think, “I have to look like Sam Hunt?”
COMBS Bro, every day. I think that every day still. Every day. I do the fasting thing and the gluten-free thing.
CARAMANICA And those are, in your mind, health things or appearance things or both?
COMBS The gluten-free thing started for mental health. I have a really rare form of O.C.D. that I have struggled with quite a bit, for basically my whole entire life. So I’ve been doing the fasting for close to a year now and the gluten-free thing for about two and a half. Obviously, I still have some drinks and stuff, so it’s not super, super strict, but I just try to avoid it anytime I can.
CARAMANICA And has that commensurately brought down whatever anxiety you might’ve felt about appearance?
COMBS It bugs me a lot that I can’t figure it out. Obviously, you know, there’s gonna be people that watch this and go, “this liberal can’t even lose weight.” That’s gonna be what people take from this whole conversation.
COSCARELLI I hope not.
COMBS It’s this puzzle I can’t figure out and I know people are gonna say, well, just don’t eat as much or whatever. It’s like, well, yeah, I’ve [expletive] tried that. But it’s a constant battle with two kids and the job that I have. And I don’t want my life to be this life of ease. I like when stuff’s hard.
COSCARELLI So does that mean you’re avoiding the new medical technology for weight loss?
COMBS I would say so. As dumb as that sounds. That stuff scares me more than I think I would enjoy the benefits of it.
COSCARELLI You want to do it the hard way.
COMBS We’re getting into a counseling session at this point. This going to sound so mental illness-y when I say this to you guys, but I feel like I’ve never done anything hard in my life. I’m not out digging ditches, right?
COSCARELLI So the body image struggle to you feels like …
COMBS It’s like this thing I can’t conquer, this impossible nut to crack. I will do it, but I’m not going to do it the short way. Not that there’s anything wrong with that — that’s a personal choice. I need to beat myself in whatever this thing is. I hate having a hard time with it, but it is the way it is.
Credits
Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli and produced by Sophie Erickson and Kate LoPresti. This episode was filmed by Lauren Pruitt, Eddie Costas, Luke Piotrowski and Pat Gunther. It was edited by Mark Zemel. Nick Pitman is our audio engineer and Brooke Minters is our executive producer. Special thanks to Rebecca Blandon, Mahima Chablani, Amanda Webster, Dahlia Haddad, Mike Cordero, Chris Moore, Caterina Clerici, Nicole Huber, Zach Caldwell, Maddy Masiello, Brad Kimbrough, Andrew Wilcox, Caryn Ganz, Sia Michel, Nina Lassam, Solana Pyne, Paula Szuchman and Sam Dolnick.
Joe Coscarelli is a culture reporter for The Times and a co-host of the Times podcast “Popcast.”
The post ‘Fast Car’ Changed Luke Combs’s Life. He’s Back for More Hits. appeared first on New York Times.
