Chris Stapleton Quotes

A lot of great bluegrass comes out of Kentucky. There's a lot of great music, like the Judds, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ricky Skaggs, and Keith Whitley. There's a lot of bluegrass intertwined with country music.

Anytime that another artist or a critic that is well-respected says something nice about you, you're always thankful and hope that you can live up to that.

I was in a band called the SteelDrivers, and we just played hard in vans, hopping on airplanes, not knowing where you're at.

I don't try to approach things any differently, songwriting-wise, regardless of what I'm doing. I try to write whatever the best thing is that I'm doing that day. If I'm working on a pop song, I'm working on a pop song to the best of my ability. If I'm working on a bluegrass song, it's the same thing. They're not really different parts of the brain.

As long as people are buying music, it's good for everybody.

I never was a liner note junkie. I didn't know who produced records or there was such a thing as a straight songwriter. I always assumed that everybody that was singing a song wrote it or made it up.

I like songs that make me feel tough. Like 'Back in Black.' You want to hear it again and get in a fight.

I was born in Fayette County, over in Lexington, Kentucky, but I was raised most of my life in Paintsville.

I'm always trying to do as many different things as I can, just so when one is not doing so hot, maybe the other is still there.

We have that storytelling history in country and bluegrass and old time and folk music, blues - all those things that combine to make up the genre. It was probably storytelling before it was songwriting, as far as country music is concerned. It's fun to be a part of that and tip the hat to that. You know, and keep that tradition alive.

I grew up in eastern Kentucky, and we would sing in the churches, and there's lots of good mountain church singers out there. Like a lot of folks who turn out to be secular music artists, that's a lot of the training you put in, whether you know it or not.

I write the songs and hand it over to the world and see what happens. But the things that I've written for people that have been hits, I don't know that I would have directed them in the right path, but they definitely wound up on the right path.

Country music is one of those places where we support each other and prop each other up.

I'm a fan of polarization. If you make something that is palatable to everybody, it's like making vanilla ice cream, and I think we have enough of that.

My dad was a very straight arrow, prayed-at-every-meal kind of guy.

I can only be me. I have a hard time being a chameleon as a singer.

Music is not a game to me. I take it very seriously.

In the kind of fast-food world that we live in, where everything's so fast paced and it's, 'Look over here! Look over there,' we don't really take the time to sit down and enjoy music - or anything else, for that matter.

It is a really interesting to hear yourself on the radio. I've gotten to hear myself in different capacities. I've heard myself on Sirius XM on the bluegrass channels, and on WSM and other places.

I don't look at family and what I do for a living as separate things. They're all kind of one thing, and this is part of their life just like it's part of mine.

I like to put something on and want to listen to it again once I get done listening to it, not feel like I need an ear break.

At the end of the day, I just have to do what I do and let it be what it's gonna be.

I like things that don't sound particularly processed or mechanical or made by machines. I like music that contains human elements, with all their flaws. There's air in it, and you can hear a room of a bunch of guys playing. Those are the magic parts.

I just try to make the best music that I can. People are going to label it whatever they're going to label it.

I like to put a record on and then listen to it again and then sit down and make my friends listen to it.

I think the path is different for everybody. Go after the doors that are open to you. That has always been my motto getting into the music business. Do the things that seem to be good opportunities and work hard at it. Try to make good decisions and be nice. Hopefully all of that will pay off at some point.