{"id":5218,"date":"2023-12-06T16:05:34","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T21:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/read.streamapse.com\/?p=5218"},"modified":"2026-04-13T16:58:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T21:58:21","slug":"chris-stapleton-on-his-fifth-album-an-expansive-take-on-southern-rock-and-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=5218","title":{"rendered":"Chris Stapleton \u2014 On His Fifth Album, An Expansive Take On Southern Rock And Soul"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s safe to say that Chris Stapleton has found his voice. The award-winning, widely beloved country singer-songwriter is known for being one of the greatest living singers of any genre, thanks to his soulful, gritty tone, his effortless sense of phrasing and dynamics, and his ease with blending genres and influences to create a sound all his own.<\/p>\n

Even so, Stapleton tells Apple Music that it took time, work, and experience for him to feel at home in his own voice, rather than trying to imitate artists he admired as he did during the earliest years of his career. \u201cIf you heard a demo of me back then, it\u2019s me trying to be Vince Gill or somebody that was a hero. It\u2019s not as a voice, as a singer with a voice. I certainly hadn\u2019t landed on that,\u201d he says. \u201cI could sing\u2014I had ability\u2014but I was still figuring that out. I think that finds you more than you find it. When you land on it, you\u2019re like, \u2018OK, this is what I do.\u2019 I can live a lot of places, in a lot of different kinds of music and have fun with that, but I still feel like I\u2019m me in those things. I\u2019m not trying to impersonate somebody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

On his fifth solo album, Stapleton sounds as good as he ever has. Co-produced by his wife, Morgane Stapleton and longtime collaborator Dave Cobb, Higher is a sneakily expansive slice of country-informed Southern rock and soul, and also boasts some of Stapleton\u2019s best lyric writing.<\/p>\n

The LP opens on a high point, the Miranda Lambert cowrite \u201cWhat Am I Gonna Do.\u201d It\u2019s a fresh take on a heartbreak tune, with Stapleton wondering what life might look like after the hurt has faded.<\/p>\n

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Stream Higher<\/strong><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cLoving You on My Mind\u201d is Stapleton at his most smoldering, with a come-hither arrangement to boot. And the record closes with \u201cMountains of My Mind,\u201d a Stapleton solo write\/performance bristling with vulnerability.<\/p>\n

Below, Stapleton shares insight into several of Higher\u2019s key tracks. \u201cWhat Am I Gonna Do\u201d \u201cI think Miranda Lambert is a wonderful artist and a wonderful writer. I don\u2019t think people talk about what a great songwriter she is enough. She and I have written some songs over the years, and I actually called her when we were making this record. I was like, \u2018Hey, do you remember that song we wrote?\u2019 I could only remember half the song and I didn\u2019t have a copy. She was kind enough to go digging for it, and she found it so we could cut it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLoving You on My Mind\u201d \u201cSome of these songs are old, and that\u2019s one of them. That song\u2019s on a Josh Turner record somewhere. He did a great job with it. But it\u2019s always one that I like to play. I like the chords in it and I like the changes in it. It\u2019s a fun one to sing. I probably haven\u2019t done as many of those kinds of sexy songs as I could have. My wife pushes for some of that stuff. I\u2019m just like, \u2018I don\u2019t know if people want to hear me do that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHigher\u201d \u201c\u2018Higher\u2019 is a song that\u2019s off the first demo session I ever did when I moved to town. It\u2019s a song I wrote by myself. And it was a step or a step and a half lower at that point in time than this. I think we landed at least a step or a step and a half higher on this, just because I was feeling good that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCrosswind\u201d \u201c\u2018Crosswind\u2019 was an idea I got driving on I-65 from Florida back to Tennessee when it was really windy. It really didn\u2019t turn into a song until the guys were kind of jamming on this groove and someone was like, \u2018Wait, this is what this is.\u2019 And we wrote a truck-driving song in the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWeight of Your World\u201d \u201cI had been listening to a lot of Bill Withers when we wrote that, and I walked into the room thinking about \u2018Lean on Me\u2019 and what a great vibe that song is, what a great message it has. I think a lot of that song is probably derivative of that. Nobody quote me on saying that I think it\u2019s \u2018Lean on Me\u2019\u2014I don\u2019t. I\u2019m not Bill Withers, and you can only hope to write standards like that. But he had a lot of songs with wonderful messages, and that was one of them. And that was our attempt at that that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

SEE CHRIS STAPLETON LIVE!<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

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\u201cMountains of My Mind\u201d \u201c\u2018Mountains of my Mind\u2019 is one I wrote by myself, and my wife was just bawling in the control room the whole time I was playing it. I just woke up one morning and wrote that one. There\u2019s some of that \u2018not being able to get through the day\u2019 sometimes. I think everybody has those days.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s safe to say that Chris Stapleton has found his voice. The award-winning, widely beloved country singer-songwriter is known for being one of the greatest living singers of any genre, thanks to his soulful, gritty tone, his effortless sense of phrasing and dynamics, and his ease with blending genres and influences to create a sound […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6547,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5218\/revisions\/6547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}