Chris Stapleton began his career as a songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee, writing songs for well-known country performers. In 2015, his debut solo album, Traveler, swept the CMAs, making him a well-known figure with his distinctive long hair and beard. Following the multiplatinum record, Stapleton drew on his own huge collection of tunes. In 2017, he released two more albums, the award-winning From a Room: Volume 1 and Volume 2. Stapleton has won eight Grammys and has been named Country Music Association Male Vocalist of the Year seven times, the most by any performer in history.
Early Years
Christopher Alvin Stapleton was born on April 15, 1978, in Lexington, Kentucky, to Carol Stapleton, a local health department employee, and Herbert Stapleton Jr., a coal miner.
Chris grew up outside of Lexington with his older brother, Herbert, and younger sister, Melanie, and his parents were avid fans of regional country artists.”It’s just part of the fabric of being from Kentucky,” Stapleton remarked in a 2015 interview with the Lexington Herald Leader. “Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley, Dwight Yoakam and Patty Loveless—the list goes on and on. Those names are simply a part of life in Kentucky. You can’t help but be aware of and affected by them. It’s practically genetic in the sense that you can’t live your life without hearing their music.”
Stapleton was popular and clean-cut as a teenager, participating in various team sports at Johnson Central High School and graduating as class valedictorian in 1996. Twenty years later, he returned to his high school to conduct a free concert and dedicate a new facility created by student carpenters for student performances on school grounds.
After high school, Stapleton attended Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, but became involved in the local music scene and dropped out after a year.
Career
After meeting some local songwriters in his hometown, Stapleton realized that songwriting was a feasible career. In a 2016 interview with CBS News, he stated, “I always thought George Strait was singing a song that he made up, and that was the end of it.” But the moment I realized it could be a profession, I thought, ‘That’s the job for me.'”
Stapleton signed a publishing agreement four days after relocating to Nashville in 2001. Over the next decade, he collaborated with many famous country musicians, including Strait (“Love’s Gonna Make It Alright”), Kenny Chesney (“Never Wanted Nothing More”), Luke Bryan (“Drink a Beer”), Thomas Rhett (“Crash and Burn”), Darius Rucker (“Come Back Song”), and Josh Turner (“Your Man”). Lee Ann Womack, Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley, and Tim McGraw have also all recorded his songs.
In 2011, Adele included a cover of “If It Hadn’t Been for Love” as a bonus track for her hit album 21.
Early Music: Traveller and Other Albums
While working as a songwriter from 2001 to 2015, Stapleton also led the progressive bluegrass band the SteelDrivers for two years, beginning in 2008. The band received three Grammy nominations for their self-titled debut and subsequent album, Reckless. In 2010, he established the rock band Jompson Brothers. That group issued one album and briefly toured as an opening act for the Zac Brown Band.
In 2013, Stapleton signed with Mercury Nashville. His song “What Are You Listening To?” was published in October but failed to gain traction, therefore the accompanying album was canceled. He collaborated with co-producer Dave Cobb to record his solo debut, Traveller. The album was released in May 2015 to positive reviews, but it did not gain much broadcast until after the CMA Awards, where it won Album of the Year. At the November awards presentation, Stapleton was also named New Artist and Male Vocalist of the Year.Traveller’s “Nobody to Blame” was his first country radio hit, and “Parachute” peaked even higher later in 2016.
Stapleton spent the rest of 2015 working on his second album with Cobb and his wife, Morgane, who chose the majority of the album’s tracks from Stapleton’s catalog of over 1,000 published songs.In May 2017, From a Room: Volume 1 won the CMA Album of the Year award. In November 2017, he released “From a Room: Volume 2”.
Awards
In the fall of 2015, Stapleton made history by winning Album of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year, and New Artist of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards. During the show, he and Justin Timberlake performed a standout duet of George Jones’ “Tennessee Whiskey” and Timberlake’s “Drink You Away.” In 2016, the Grammy committee recognized him with four nominations and two prizes for Traveler, including Best Country Solo Performance and Best Country Album.
In 2018, he received three additional Grammys for From a Room, Volume 1: Best Country Album, Best Country Song for “Broken Halos,” and Best Country Solo Performance for “Either Way.” He played “Wildflowers” with Emmylou Harris to honor the late Tom Petty during the awards event broadcast.
In 2022, Stapleton won three more Grammy Awards. In 2020, he won Best Country Album for his album Starting Over, Best Country Song for “Cold,” and Best Solo Country Performance for “You Should Probably Leave”. Later that year, he became the first artist to win Male Vocalist of the Year six times at the CMA Awards, passing George Strait, Vince Gill, and Blake Shelton.
In September 2023, Stapleton got three CMA Award nominations, including Entertainer of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year. He earned the latter for the seventh time during the November ceremony.
Elton John Tribute
Elton John personally asked Stapleton to record “I Want Love” for his 2018 album, Restoration: Reimagining the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. The 13-song collection includes Little Big Town, Miranda Lambert, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Dierks Bentley, Vince Gill, and Don Henley.
New Song and 2023 Album
In September 2023, ESPN aired a reworked version of Phil Collins’ classic song “In the Air Tonight” featuring Stapleton and Snoop Dogg as the theme song for Monday Night Football broadcasts.
On November 10, 2023, Stapleton will release his new album, Higher, his first since 2020’s Start Over.
Wife and Kids
Stapleton met Morgane Hayes in 2003, while both were working as songwriters in adjacent buildings. Morgane would pay a visit to a friend at Sea Gayle Music, hoping to catch him in passing. After a few months, he approached her about co-writing a song. “That was our first date,” she recalled in a 2015 interview with The Washington Post. “We didn’t get much writing done that night.”
The couple married in 2007 and have been pretty much inseparable since. Morgane, a great singer-songwriter in her own right, works closely with Chris on all parts of his creative process. He has “you are my sunshine” carved on his wedding band, and the couple frequently performs the song together on stage. Chris also wrote one of her favorite songs, “Daddy Doesn’t Pray Anymore,” which appears on his debut album.
Chris and Morgane have five children: son Waylon (born 2009), daughter Ada (born 2010), twins Macon and Samuel (born 2018), and a son born in 2019 whose name the couple has not announced publicly. The entire family travels together.