Chris Stapleton is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist from Lexington, Kentucky. His music includes bluegrass, country and southern rock, and he is also associated with outlaw country, Americana and folk.

Career

Stapleton writes country songs for other artists as well as recording his own material. He has six country number-one songs as a songwriter, including “Never Wanted Nothing More” for Kenny Chesney, “Love’s Gonna Make It Alright” for George Strait and “Come Back Song” for Darius Rucker. More than 150 of his songs appear on albums by artists including Adele, Luke Bryan, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and Dierks Bentley. He also co-writes with Vince Gill, Peter Frampton and Sheryl Crow.

He serves as frontman of The SteelDrivers from 2008 to 2010, and is also a member of The Jompson Brothers. He releases his debut solo studio album, Traveller, in 2015. The album reaches number one on the US Billboard 200 and is certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.

His second album, From A Room: Volume 1, reaches number two on the US Billboard 200, and its follow-up, From A Room: Volume 2, also debuts at number two.

Awards

Stapleton wins Album of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year from both the Country Music Association Awards and the Academy of Country Music Awards. He also wins the Grammy Award for Best Country Album and Best Country Solo Performance at the 58th annual ceremony.

Early life

He is born in 1978 in a Lexington hospital and grows up in Staffordsville, Kentucky, near Paintsville. His father is a coal miner, his mother works at the local health department, and he comes from a family of coal miners. He has an older brother and a younger sister. He attends Johnson Central High School, where he is class valedictorian, and later studies engineering at Vanderbilt University before dropping out after a year.

Personal life

Stapleton is married to singer-songwriter Morgane Hayes, who co-writes Carrie Underwood’s 2006 single “Don’t Forget to Remember Me” and has a recording deal with Arista Nashville. They meet while working at adjacent publishing houses, have two children and live in Nashville.