Luke Combs Is Country Music’s Biggest Star. He’s Also Its Biggest Champion

A few days before the official start of CMA Fest in Nashville, Luke Combs is already running at full speed. He’s set to perform at Nissan Stadium over the weekend, but today he’s making up for the last two years or so of pandemic delays and cancellations with a giant celebration for a run of nine Number One songs that he co-wrote — from 2018’s “Beautiful Crazy” to the most recent, “Doin’ This.” Combs and a small army of collaborators have gathered at the Nashville headquarters of performing-rights organization BMI to mark the occasion with a concert in the parking lot.

“Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah,” Combs says twice, raising a glass of some potent brown liquid as BMI exec Clay Bradley rattles off statistic after statistic about these hit songs. Combs is in good spirits and makes the rounds in the room — never holding court, just sticking to smaller group conversations.

More from Rolling Stone

• Luke Combs's Latest is Arena-Country With Nuance and Intimacy

• Luke Combs Shows off His Soulful Side in New Song 'The Kind of Love We Make'

• Sturgill Simpson, Eric Church Cover John Anderson on New Tribute Album

Outside in the June heat, the BMI building has taken on a fortress-like appearance. Temporary fencing surrounds the complex and its parking lot, where Combs is set to perform for a humble crowd of about 8,000 — considerably less than the arenas and stadiums he’s headlining at this point. Except, instead of Combs’ full-band, full-production concerts, this one is staged like an intimate writers’ room hang. There are even couches onstage, from which Combs and his co-writers are singing and telling stories behind the hits.

Combs insists he was just “lucky to be in the room” and frequently directs attention back to his collaborators, including solo artist Ray Fulcher, who was gearing up to release his debut LP. “Let’s not sleep on Ray’s album coming out on Friday,” he tells the crowd when Fulcher joins him for one of several songs. This willingness to cede the spotlight says something about the 31-year-old North Carolina native, one of country music’s biggest stars: Luke Combs genuinely loves what he does.

“I had been singing forever and I always loved that. And I never in a million years would have thought that I would be doing that for a living,” Combs says, sitting on a sofa in his manager’s office before the BMI party. He’s wearing a camouflage Hunt Brothers t-shirt, the same one he’ll wear during his performance later that day. “I would love to tell you I knew when I was five years old that I wanted to be a country singer, [but] I just loved music. And then when I picked the guitar up, I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is how I can make a living doing this and feel like I’m really good at it as well.’”

“I think what motivates him is moving people,” Fulcher says. “A great songwriter and artist just has this thing in them that drives them to create art that people will relate to — will raise a glass to, will cry to, will have as their life’s soundtrack. And he has this innate ability to really tap into that beautifully and serve those people he’s singing to and writing for.”

Erika Goldring*

Combs also loves discovering new music. An avid listener with broad tastes, he raves about the latest projects by pop stars Jack Harlow and Post Malone, and talks at length about the deep catalogs of country stalwarts Don Williams and Vince Gill, along with the sonic adventures of Sturgill Simpson.

“You have to be seeking out new stuff,” Combs says. “It’s so easy to detach yourself from everything that’s coming out and just focus on your thing. That can be a disservice to yourself sometimes. Not in the sense of ‘Let’s chase this thing that’s working now,’ but it’s just being aware of what people are listening to and what’s working. It’s really important.”

Currently, Combs is obsessed with Virginia country-soul band 49 Winchester, whose t-shirt he wore in a recent Instagram post — essentially vouching for the group to his 4.3 million followers.

“When you’re an up-and-coming band, there’s always the hope, in the back of your mind, that the heavy hitters are taking note of the things you are doing,” Isaac Gibson, 49 Winchester’s singer-guitarist, tells Rolling Stone. “It’s an honor to have a guy like Luke supporting what 49 is doing.”

In 2020, Combs put his stamp on the Wilder Blue, a Texas country-bluegrass group then known as Hill Country, saying their record “strikes every chord that I want it to.” That same year he invited bluegrass wizard Billy Strings down to his Key West retreat to write songs.

“My manager was like this dude Luke Combs wants to hang. I’m like, ‘He’s a big country star, fuck it, let’s go chill with him and see what he’s all about,’” says Strings, who was blown away by Combs’ voice. “You sit in a room with him and sing? Oh my god. It’s like, ‘Oh shit, I’m in the room with a singer.’”

Since then, Combs’ booming voice may have remained the same, but a whole lot else has changed, particularly when the pandemic tried to halt his momentum. Combs had written a batch of songs to follow up his second album, 2019’s What You See Is What You Get, and was getting ready to record, but the uncertainty of his touring operation required all of his focus — he was having to make decisions about vaccination policy, deal with absences of sick crew members, and generally make it work in less-than-ideal circumstances as he played the biggest rooms of his career. 

“People are like, ‘Hey man, like what if I get Covid and I end up in the hospital? What do I tell my kids?’” he says. “And you’re like, ‘What the fuck?’ It was a lot of pressure.”

In a very self-aware move, he decided to press pause on the album.

“In my mind it was either just full-blown awesome tour and full-blown awesome album afterwards or half-assed tour, half-assed album at the same time,” Combs says. “I care too much about people [who] spend their money on the show.”

It’s a mission statement Combs lays out plainly in his latest Number One, “Doin’ This.” He’s successful now, but he’d still be making music even if it wasn’t his main job. “I’d have a Friday night crowd in the palm of my hand/Cup of brown liquor, couple buddies in a band/Singin’ them same damn songs like I am now,” go the lyrics. “Doin’ This” was the first single and introduction to Growin’ Up, his long-gestating new album. A few days after the BMI concert, he performs “Doin’ This” at CMA Fest for thousands at Nissan Stadium, and it absolutely kills. People cheer nonstop and it feels victorious in a way that’s hard to articulate.