Chris Stapleton Reaches Double Digits with Pair of Grammy Wins
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1978-present
Latest News: Chris Stapleton Wins Ninth, 10th Grammys
Chris Stapleton won his ninth and 10th Grammy Awards on Sunday, with his single “White Horse” earning trophies for Best Country Solo Performance and Best Country Song. For the latter, Stapleton, 45, and writer Dan Wilson’s song was chosen over Morgan Wallen’s hit “Last Night” and Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves’ popular No. 1 tune “I Remember Everything.”
“Chris isn’t here, so I’m taking two of them home. My biggest thanks is to Chris for writing songs with me. This is great,” said Wilson, as Stapleton was not in attendance during the Grammys pre-show.
Stapleton was also nominated for Best Country Duo/Group Performance for "We Don’t Fight Anymore,” his collaboration with Carly Pearce.
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Who Is Chris Stapleton?
Chris Stapleton began his career in Nashville, Tennessee, as a sought-after songwriter who furnished songs for numerous famous country artists. Easy to spot due to his signature long hair and striking beard, he became a major star in the fall of 2015 when his debut solo album, Traveller, practically swept the CMAs. Stapleton followed up the multiplatinum album by drawing on his own vast repertoire of songs. In 2017, he released two more albums: the award-winning From a Room: Volume 1 and From a Room: Volume 2. In total, Stapleton has won 10 Grammys and is a seven-time Country Music Association Male Vocalist of the Year—more than any artist in history.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Christopher Alvin Stapleton
BORN: April 15, 1978
BIRTHPLACE: Lexington, Kentucky
SPOUSE: Morgane Stapleton (2007-present)
CHILDREN: Waylon, Ada, Macon, Samuel, and 1 son (name unknown)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries
Early Years
Christopher Alvin Stapleton was born on April 15, 1978, in Lexington, Kentucky, to Carol Stapleton, a local health department worker, and Herbert Stapleton Jr., a coal miner.
Along with his older brother, Herbert, and younger sister, Melanie, Chris grew up outside of Lexington where his parents were active listeners of country artists from the region.“It’s just part of the fabric of being from Kentucky,” Stapleton said in a 2015 with the Lexington Herald Leader. “Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley, Dwight Yoakam and Patty Loveless, the list goes on and on. Those names are just part of life in Kentucky. You can’t help but be aware of them and be influenced by them. It’s almost genetic in the sense that you don’t have an existence that doesn’t involve their music.”
Popular and clean-cut in his teenage years, Stapleton played several team sports at Johnson Central High School and graduated as class valedictorian in 1996. Twenty years later, he returned to his high school to play a free concert and dedicate a new space, built by student carpenters, where students can perform on school grounds.
After high school, Stapleton went on to study engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, but soon immersed himself in the local music scene and dropped out after one year.
Songwriting Career
After meeting some local songwriters in his hometown, Stapleton discovered that songwriting was a viable profession. In a 2016 interview with CBS News, he said: “I always thought that George Strait was singing a song, he made it up, and that was the end of it. But the instant I found out that that could be a job, I thought, ‘That’s the job for me.’”
In 2001, Stapleton landed a publishing deal just four days after moving to Nashville. For the next decade or so, he scored an impressive number of hits with 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.
Additionally in 2011, Adele recorded a cover of “If It Hadn’t Been for Love” as a bonus track for her smash album 21.
Early Music: Traveller and Other Albums
While consistently working as a songwriter from 2001 through 2015, Stapleton also led the progressive bluegrass group the SteelDrivers for two years, starting in 2008. The band released two albums—a self-titled debut and Reckless—and earned three Grammy nominations. He then formed the Jompson Brothers rock group in 2010. That group released one album and toured briefly as an opening act for Zac Brown Band.
In 2013, Stapleton signed with Mercury Nashville. His single “What Are You Listening To?” released that October but didn’t go anywhere, so its accompanying album was scrapped. He then hooked up with co-producer Dave Cobb to record Traveller, his solo debut. The album appeared in May 2015 to strong reviews but didn’t receive wide airplay until after the CMAs where it won Album of the Year. Also at the November awards ceremony, Stapleton was named New Artist of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year. Traveller’s “Nobody to Blame” became his first country radio hit, and “Parachute” charted even higher later in 2016.
Stapleton spent the rest of 2015 working on his second album with Cobb and his wife, Morgane, who handpicked the majority of the album’s songs from Stapleton’s library of more than a 1,000 published tunes. From a Room: Volume 1 came out in May 2017 and won the CMA award for Album of the Year. In November 2017, he released From a Room: Volume 2.
Awards
In fall 2015, Stapleton became the first artist ever to win 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 show-stealing duet of the George Jones classic “Tennessee Whiskey” as well as Timberlake’s “Drink You Away.” In 2016, the Grammy committee took notice, granting him four nominations and then two awards for Traveller: Best Country Solo Performance and Best Country Album.
In 2018, he won three more 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 also performed “Wildflowers” with Emmylou Harris to honor the late Tom Petty during the awards show broadcast.
In 2022, Stapleton collected another three Grammy Awards. His 2020 album, Starting Over, won Best Country Album, meanwhile Best Country Song went to “Cold,” and “You Should Probably Leave” earned him Best Solo Country Performance. 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 received three nominations for the annual CMA Awards, including for Entertainer of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year. He won the latter for a seventh time at the November ceremony.
In February 2024, Stapleton won his ninth and 10th Grammy Awards, for Best Country Solo Performance and Best Country Song for “White Horse.”
Elton John Tribute
Elton John personally called Stapleton and asked him to record “I Want Love” for a 2018 record, Restoration: Reimagining the Songs of Elton John and Bernie Taupin. The 13-song collection also features 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 debuted a new version of the hit Phil Collins song “In the Air Tonight” featuring Stapleton and Snoop Dogg as the theme song for its Monday Night Football broadcasts.
On November 10, 2023, Stapleton released his new album Higher, the singer’s first since 2020’s Starting Over.
Wife and Kids
Stapleton met Morgane Hayes in 2003 when they were both working as songwriters in adjacent buildings. Morgane would visit a friend at Sea Gayle Music hoping to catch him in passing. After a few months, he asked if she’d like to write a song together. “That ended up being our first date,” she said in a 2015 interview with The Washington Post. “We didn’t get much writing done that night.”
The couple got married in 2007 and have been just about inseparable ever since. A talented singer-songwriter in her own right, Morgane collaborates with Chris in all aspects of his creative process. He has “you are my sunshine” etched into his wedding band, and the couple often perform the song together on stage. Chris also wrote one of her favorite songs, “Daddy Doesn’t Pray Anymore,” which was featured on his first album.
Chris and Morgane have five children: son Waylon, born in 2009; daughter Ada, born in 2010; twins Macon and Samuel, who arrived in 2018; and a son born in 2019 whose name the couple hasn’t revealed publicly. The whole family tours together.
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