One day, I got on the Jason Aldean tour, and I put my snip toe boots straight through one of the grates on the catwalks and busted on stage,” he recalls. “When I first started, I was wearing really tight jeans, cowboy boots, and a T-shirt. So he decided to wear them for the show that night. “I felt more like me than I had in the last six years,” he confides. He’d long traded those well-worn boots for Chuck Taylors, not only for comfort but they just seemed to feel right-and when he pulled out those dusty boots and slipped them on for that day’s meet-and-greet, something almost indescribable shifted inside of him. On the day of a sold-out show, during the 2019 run of his Very Hot Summer Tour, Rhett discovered his pair of old cowboy boots in the back of a closet on the tour bus. Things took a hard left nearly two years ago. “Who knows what my records will sound like in five or 10 years, but right now, this is what feels the most natural,” he says. He made the record, largely produced by Dan Huff and Jesse Frasure, with Matt Dragstrem hopping on a song, to remember what it felt like with just a guitar in his hands. As a result, he’s collected an appropriate level of praise, but make no mistake: he didn’t do it for the applause. Where “ What’s Your Country Songs?” and “ Blame It on a Backroad” feel more in line with what he’s built to this point, “ Ya Heard” unpacks a particular throwback tilt, allowing Rhett to slide his reedy timbre quite effortlessly into the arrangement. I just made a bunch of shifts in my life, and my musical path has taken a lot of different curves.”Ĭountry Again (Side A) surprises in plenty of ways. You don’t even know what country is.’ That’s what I started doing. And I wanted to remind a lot of the people who were like, ‘Man, you’re not country. “On the new album, that was exactly what I was feeling. “My wife and my manager have always said, ‘If it doesn’t feel authentic to you, then there’s no reason to put it out.’ Whether that is super country or pop country or R&B or bluegrass, I always have to say what’s authentic to me,” he says, shrugging off genre criticisms. Yet, critical acclaim alluded him -not that it bothers him too much these days. Country music is three chords and the truth after all.Īcross two more hit records, Life Changes (2017) and Center Point Road(2019), both bowing atop Billboard’s Top Country Albums, Rhett continued flexing his commercial appeal and soon competed alongside the likes of Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean. “ Die a Happy Man” arrived soon after as the record’s second single, showing that he, too, could pluck upon the heartstrings as all the greats do. “ Crash and Burn,” released in 2015 as the lead-in to Tangled Up, threw genre purists for a loop-further demonstrating not only his genre-pushing ways but that he was no flash in the pan. With his 2013 debut record, It Goes Like This, Rhett struck a platinum mine, achieving numerous RIAA certifications across such hit singles as “ It Goes Like This” and “ Get Me Some of That.” Radio airplay and immediate sales success catapulted him into the stratosphere, positioning him as country music’s next leading man, a tastemaker who frequently tailored his pop-country with an R&B flair. I would look at those things, and I would say, ‘Yeah, that’s really cool, but now we just keep grinding… because what’s next?’ It was always figuring out what the next big thing was.” There’s a lot of times early on when I got a lot of really cool achievements-we’d win an award, or we’d sell out our first arena, or we’d have two or three hits in a row. “I kind of regret how much I worried early on.

The 11-track release, issued right before the summer heat set in, testifies to Rhett’s newfound understanding of self, framed around growing older and realizing that some things are always meant to change. “I guess I’m growing up,” the singer, now 31, observes with an essential cut on his new record, Country Again (Side A). On holiday with 17 other family members, holed away in a house on the Florida coastline along the 30A area, he supposes his 30s aren’t too bad yet.

When he hops on the phone, a few days after the Fourth of July, the country superstar speaks radiantly about his life. “Having kids makes you change, whether you want to or not,” whispers Thomas Rhett, sneaking away to find decent cell service.

Thomas rhett growing up