Top 60 Chris Stapleton Quotes

Anyone who says it’s so easy to write a country hit and that it’s just a formula – well, try it sometime. If it was that easy, everybody would be doing it.

I like to fish. I collect pocketknives. I inherited a nice collection from my father and grandfather.

If there’s one kind of music that makes somebody happy, how is that a bad thing? And if there’s another kind that makes somebody else happy, how is that a bad thing? I don’t get why anybody cares about what they don’t like so much.

I used to spend my money on going to Tom Petty concerts.

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

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 moved to Nashville to be a songwriter. I found out that was a job, that someone would pay you to sit in a room with a guitar and make up songs! It is the greatest job in the world. I wrote three or four songs a day. That’s what I lived for.

You always hope for the best when you put something out and try to make the best music you can make, but you can’t control what happens after that.

I love music so much, and I love musicians – I love singers. It’s fun. That’s what music’s supposed to be. Fun.

When you’re writing with an artist or for an artist, you have to help them serve their vision. That’s the cool part about writing songs. There are no rules.

For me, the more time you can take and the more care you can take with songs, the better off you’re going to be.

I’m gonna keep making music that hopefully I think is good, and whatever comes out of that, that will be fine with me.

I don’t ever view myself as a straight country act, and I don’t think the straight country acts view me as a straight country act, either – but I certainly belong to them.

I’m not a hustler. I don’t pitch songs. I don’t ask people to write with me. It’s not what I do.

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

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.

I want the dude in the top row to feel like he’s down there on the front row in a club.

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

Among my dad’s generation, when you gave another man a pocketknife as a gift, it was a show of respect. I’ll still give someone the knife out of my pocket.

I think it’s OK if somebody likes my music and likes Sam Hunt’s music, too. And I think if we’re both selling records, it’s good for everybody. I think it allows other records to get made.

I’m a fan of records. I’m a fan of listening to something cover to cover and not wanting to skip over anything.

I grew up less than a mile from folks that lived in shacks with dirt floors. I certainly know that there are needs in this country. Not too far from your house, if you look around, people need to be helped.

It’s nice to see people invest in what you do as an artist and sing the songs back at you and feel something. You get to feel something more than what you were feeling when you made the record.

If I’m feeling like rock, we’ll do some of that, and if I’m feeling some other way, we might do some of that. So, that’s typically how I record and write and play music and anything else.

My wife has great taste in everything but men. The vast majority of the songs on my debut album, ‘Traveller,’ came from lists she made.

My earliest memories of music are probably my dad listening to a bunch of outlaw country, but also old R&B and Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin. But, you know, I had rock phases and liked more modern R&B acts. I’ve always listened to all kinds of music, and I like all kinds of music.

I always tell people, ‘The music’s free. I get paid to travel.’

My favorite record of all time is Tom Petty’s ‘Wildflowers.’ I hold it as the standard – in terms of sonics, sequencing, and songs. It shows that making a complete record is important, rather than just making a single.

I don’t make records to win awards. I make records to make records and hopefully make the records as good as they can be.

The curse of being a songwriter is that’s you’re always at work. I could look out the window right now and see something that would make me want to write.

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

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.

I always just try to write the best songs that I can at any given time, and sometimes those songs are for me, and sometimes they’re for other people. And that’s to be evaluated after the fact.

I went to college a little bit, and that didn’t work out, and I didn’t finish. So, I would play in bars until I ran out of money, and then I’d get a real job.

I’m always just looking to get back to the joy of playing music, and keeping it simple, as much as I can.

I am always interested in making myself as uncomfortable as I can. Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Can I stand onstage and sing this song and sell it?’ Sometimes I can’t. In a room, you get to pretend a little bit and step outside of yourself.

I’ve always been in touring bands in some capacity.

If you think about what everyone else will think, you forget to just make music.

I don’t think country music needs saving from anything.

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

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.

I’m not reinventing the wheel here. I’m not Chuck Berry or Bill Monroe. Guys like that are from outer space.

I don’t know that my voice ever makes sense anywhere, necessarily. I would sing bluegrass music, and I don’t fit in there; I would sing rock music, and I’m probably a little too hillbilly for that. And country, I’m too much rock n’ roll for there sometimes.

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.

Everybody’s got a story on their beards. I guess it’s just a way of finding common ground with people you otherwise might not know.

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.

If I have a talent, it lies in the creative process.

I was in a bluegrass band. I made two records with a band called the SteelDrivers. They were nominated for two Grammys. I then I was in a rock band called the Junction Brothers; we made kind of ’70s hard rock music.

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.

I don’t look at it as mainstream country versus outsider.

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

The show isn’t about screens, and we don’t have any video content or lasers or things blowing up. I want people to come to our show to listen. I want the show to be the music.

I was a car salesman, if you can believe 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.

It’s a unique thing, and it’s probably the thing I love most about songs and music – their ability to connect in a human way.

Everybody likes to listen to a song because it’s fun, and nobody wants to sit around and listen to ‘I-really-have-to-analyze-these-lyrics’ songs all the time.

I can pass myself off as a ‘Duck Dynasty’ impersonator a lot.

Whether you like modern incarnations of what country radio hits are, or you like what I’m doing, or you like something really off in folk, poetry Americana land, it’s all just music, man. If you like one of them, great – go buy it.

I’m only worried about what I’m doing or how I present music. I just try to do things I want to listen to, and I think that’s what everybody else is try doing, too.

I think, at some point, all of us – I’m gonna speak personally, not for everybody else – you’re gonna feel like a one-trick pony, and you might even be a one-trick pony. But at some point, if it’s a really good trick, everybody’s still gonna appreciate it.