Luke Combs Refuses to Believe You Don’t Like Country Music
· Time
On a Thursday morning in April, Luke Combs is sitting pretty at the top of the country-music charts. His new album, The Way I Am, is a hit; he has multiple songs on Billboard’s Hot 100, and in March he broke the attendance record at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium, drawing more fans than the 2024 Super Bowl. In other words, he’s living the dream. But two things can be true at the same time, and today—like most days—Combs is also living the reality of a dad just trying to get through it.
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Wearing an Appalachian State football T-shirt and a worn-down expression, the father of three young boys is hiding out in the one quiet space on his property outside Nashville, having just been relieved by the nanny. His youngest son, Chet, was born in February, and his middle son, 2-year-old Beau, is experiencing a classic case of new-baby jealousy. “You can’t really reason with him,” Combs says, sighing. “He's just not old enough to really respond to much other than like, ‘Hey man, if you want to lay there and cry on the floor, then that's up to you.’”
This story is part of the 2026 TIME100. Read Ed Sheeran’s tribute to Luke Combs here.
The 36-year-old will talk about the unglamorous side of parenting with the same matter-of-fact candor as he will about his role in country music, his distaste for people’s obsession with knowing his politics, and his love of luxury watches and sports cards. As an artist, he combines a traditional country sound and respect for the genre’s roots with lyrics and themes that resonate with audiences today. His rich, textured voice rings true whether he’s delivering a deeply felt ballad or a raucous party song.
Despite his eight Grammy nominations, six Country Music Association awards, and membership in the Grand Ole Opry, Combs comes across as an easygoing, take-me-as-I-am kind of dude—in large part because he’s kept his feet firmly planted in family life. “I get sneezed on or thrown up on like every day,” Combs says. He’s built his schedule around being home with his wife and kids. “You catch me Monday through Friday, I'm at the house, Mr. Mom, changing dipes, giving baths, cooking dinners,” he says, adding that he leaves to play shows on the weekends like some dads leave to play golf. “Our life is complicated but oddly simple at the same time.”
It’s hard not to be charmed by Combs’ everyman vibe, and it also helps that he looks the part. With a thick beard and a loyalty to baseball caps and Columbia Sportswear fishing shirts, he’s unpretentious in his aesthetic choices, and he’s been open about his struggles with body image and mental health in a way that only makes him more relatable. “Luke represents the down-home people, the people that work hard to take care of their families, the people who would give you the shirt off their back,” says his friend, CMA- and Grammy-winning artist Lainey Wilson. “He’s not about the fluff.”
Comb’s assessment of his own appeal is simple: “I think the thing that maybe people like about me is that I'm not that interesting.”
Combs was born in Huntersville, N.C., and raised in Asheville, N.C., by two working parents. They told him to chase his dreams, but for a long time he wasn’t sure what that looked like. “Everybody’s parents should tell them that,” Combs says now. “But I also think there’s this undertone when you grow up in lower-middle-class America. It’s like, ‘Hey, dream within reason. Let’s not get crazy here. You want to be an astronaut? Maybe you could be a mechanic instead—that’s basically the same thing.’”
Eleven years ago he’d never been on an airplane. Now he sells out shows across the U.S. and in cities like London and Sydney. The way it happened is a good story, Cinderella-esque. Picture Combs in college at Appalachian State. He’s studying criminal justice, thinking he might be a cop. But mostly he’s partying with his friends and eventually, crucially, messing around with the guitar he started playing at 21. He starts performing cover sets at the local bar where he’s working as a bouncer. He drops out of school and in 2014 moves to Nashville, where he writes some songs, spending his last $200 to master and release the best one—the moody “Hurricane.” That song goes on to sell 10,000 copies and earn him enough cash to master the rest, which gets him a manager and a record deal.
Hits like “Hurricane” and the bouncy “When It Rains It Pours” on his Combs’ first album—2017’s This One’s for You—showcased his range. “Beautiful Crazy,” a popular wedding song from 2018, saw him slow things down and get romantic. “Beer Never Broke My Heart” on 2019’s What You See Is What You Get brought the kind of anthemic, rock-inflected sound that plays well in arenas. And when his 2023 cover of Tracy Chapman’s wistful classic “Fast Car” became a surprise hit and he later shared a rare, intimate performance with her at the 2024 Grammys, Combs found a whole new audience.
What would Combs be doing if he’d never learned to play guitar? “There’s no telling,” he says. “I'd probably be just working some low-level job or would have been forced to learn a trade. Because I definitely was not going to graduate from school, whether music came along or not.”
Country music has grown more popular, with more diverse audiences in more countries, over the past decade. And as its reach has expanded, so has audiences’ recognition of its breadth. Jelly Roll, Shaboozey, Kacey Musgraves—they’ve all carved their own lanes while generating hits. Ella Langley’s pop-influenced single “Choosin’ Texas” has held the top spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 for multiple weeks this spring—a space also occupied this year by artists like Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Harry Styles, and Bad Bunny. At the 2025 Grammys, Beyoncé won her first ever Album of the Year award for her country album Cowboy Carter. Morgan Wallen plays with pop and R&B; Zach Bryan with folk and indie rock.
Combs is often mentioned in the same breath as Wallen and Bryan, two other country stars who’ve found major success in the streaming age. As leading faces of country music in the Trump era, all three are frequently asked about their politics. Combs has spoken out on politicized topics a few times during the course of his career. In 2021, he apologized for past use of Confederate-flag imagery, drawing backlash from some fans who believed he was revealing himself to be a liberal. He has also embraced the meaning that his song "Whoever You Turn Out to Be" has held for parents of queer children. But when it comes to hot-button issues, he generally prefers not to engage. He’ll concede that his genre begs the conversation, as its rise has paralleled the rise of a Middle American voice that long felt stifled or ignored. But he doesn’t want to align himself with a party or say who he votes for. “I guess I've never understood why I would care what my favorite musical artist thinks about politics,” Combs says. “Maybe that's naive, or maybe that's dumb—I'm judged all the time for my takes on these things, and that's OK with me.”
For him, those conversations are better kept among people he actually knows. “Me and all my buddies, we discuss it mildly. But if it ever goes down the lane of ‘I don’t agree with this take’ or whatever, it’s like, well, just leave it,” he says. “I'm not willing to lose my best friends over what they think about border immigration. That would be such a ridiculous reason to lose a friend.”
More broadly, he’s adamant about making space for differences of opinion. “Not everybody should have to be the same or believe the same thing,” he says. “That's the beauty of the country that we live in—the country that everyone is so up in arms about is the country that gives us all the opportunity to say what we want to say and do things the way we want to do them. I think we lose sight of that.”
In August last year, Combs became the first country artist to have two songs surpass the 1 billion streams mark on Spotify. “Streaming has changed the game for all music,” Combs says. “It puts the power in the fans’ hands—they make the singles now and they decide what's popular.”
Still, Comb’s latest album didn’t debut at No. 1 on the Billboard chart. And that’s because it faced some stiff competition. The Way I Am came out the same week as K-pop sensation BTS’ Arirang. Country is on the rise, Combs contends, but it’s not on the same level as certain global pop superstars. “You're not competing with that unless you are a Taylor Swift,” he says. “I've reached places in my career that I never thought I would reach, like playing two nights in a stadium. She could probably play 15 nights in the same stadium, and I can’t even imagine that level of fame and influence.” (Combs is playing three shows at London’s Wembley Stadium this summer; with the Eras Tour, Swift made history as the first artist to play it eight times in a single tour.) “You have to be able to touch the entire world to get those kind of numbers,” he continues. “And country has expanded tenfold since I started, but it's just not even close to where it will hopefully be one day.”
Combs often references a refrain he heard a lot growing up: “I listen to everything but country.” Even he used to say it, to impress his friends, despite being a lifelong fan of Vince Gill, Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, and more. But now that streaming has opened up access to a wide variety of country music—as opposed to the old days of radio, which fed listeners a highly curated, narrow selection—there’s no excuse. “It's like saying you don't like pasta—it's impossible to not like,” he says. “There's some version of it that you like. You just haven't found that one yet.” You don’t have to vibe with his music, but he’ll take it as a point of pride if he can get you to enjoy someone else’s.
In 2024, after four albums, Combs released Fathers & Sons, a stripped-down record about the experience of raising (and being) a son. “Those are the albums that you, at least career wise, are the least rewarded for,” he says, noting that Fathers & Sons was his least successful record from a commercial point of view, even if it’s the one he’s the most proud of making. “You feel like you're having to run this massive corporation at the same time, so you also can't get too lost in doing that stuff.”
There’s a tinge of self-consciousness in the way Combs talks about how he’s spent the last few years, given that he hasn’t put out a booming mass-market album since 2023’s Gettin’ Old. It comes through when he talks about Fathers & Sons, and it’s right there in “Back in the Saddle,” the opening track on The Way I Am: “I’ve been gone a little too long/ I've been waitin' on a drummer to kick off a comeback song.” Longevity requires walking a fine line between giving your fans what they know and love and not staying too stagnant. “Your first really successful album is the easiest one to ever write. Because it's like, Oh, well, I just wrote all the stuff that I can relate to, that's personal to me, and other people relate to it,” he says. “After you've done that two or three times, it's like, What happens now? So you have to kind of grow up with your fan base a little bit too.”
—Photograph by Mark Seliger for TIMEAll of which is to say, Combs felt a certain pressure to make sure The Way I Am was a commercial success. He needed hits—the kind of songs his fans will stream all day, listen to in their cars, and buy tickets to see him play live.
He teamed up with a long list of collaborators to put together a 22-track album that ultimately showcases a little bit of everything he does well. There are the rowdy bar songs “My Kinda Saturday Night” and “Alcohol of Fame” (see what he did there?), and there are the heartfelt ballads “The Way I Am” and “Giving Her Away.” He makes a point not to stick to autobiographical material, telling stories about a convict in “15 Minutes” and sneaking around with a new love interest in “Seeing Someone”—but sprinkles in references to topics that matter to him, like mental health. Since his childhood, Combs has dealt with Pure O, a form of OCD that causes him to fixate on destructive thoughts. “I do care a lot about that stuff, because I know there's kids out there right now that are going through what I went through,” he says. “And that pains me to know.” His OCD is well managed now, and he makes a point to talk about it in hopes of helping others identify and get care for a mental-health condition that’s not widely discussed or understood.
For all Combs’ awareness of what it takes to stay successful in country music, and all the effort he’s put in, he also nods to an example of a completely different way to move through the industry. After his big performance with Chapman at the Grammys two years ago, Combs joined the singer-songwriter in her trailer to debrief. He asked her what she intended to do next, how she might capitalize on the moment. But Chapman told him she had no plans besides continuing on with her normal life. “I remember thinking like, Damn, that's f-cking cool,” Combs says. “She was just like, ‘I'm going to get in my car and I’m going to drive home and if nobody ever sees me again, then that's fine. And if they do, then that's fine, too. Whatever makes me happy is what I want to do.’”
There’s a brightness in Combs’ eyes as he tells the story, a little glimmer of awe. Maybe someday he’ll be that person, too—the one who does whatever he wants, outside pressures be damned. “I strive to be at that point,” Combs says, “where you make decisions only for what truly makes you happy.”
Wardrobe: Katy Robbins; Groomer: Cali Jeffries Lightcap; Prop: Ruby Guidara; Production: Ruth Levy, Madi Overstreet; Location: Bel-Aire Unisex Salon.