Music

Everybody’s had the blues.
Merle Haggard‘s observation was true in the 1970s, and it still resonates in 2025 in country music as the genre welcomes a new wave of blues-tinged artists. 

Valory released Preston Cooper‘s first radio single — “Weak,” bolstered by Stevie Ray Vaughan guitar tones and Hammond B-3 — to broadcasters via PlayMPE on April 23. RECORDS Nashville took Texas singer-songwriter Ty Myers to radio on April 10 with “Ends of the Earth,” a spacious, almost churchy ballad. And Big Loud’s Alabama-born Kashus Culpepper has steadily rolled out tracks over the last year with videos that feel akin to the Mississippi Delta circa 1945. Culpepper’s catalog invites comparisons to Keb’ Mo’ and Leon Bridges, and his latest track — “Southern Man,” released March 27 — features sweaty slide guitar from bluesy Americana figure Marcus King.

“I think the blues is the root to every genre out there,” Ohio-bred Cooper says. “You always have to have a rhythm, you know. You always have to have a beat. And I think blues starts that for all genres.”

The rise of the blues makes sense in a genre like country that appeals primarily to a working-class audience. The nation has experienced years of division, and economic uncertainties are turning the screws even tighter on the average pocketbook. Consumers are already singing the blues.

Trending on Billboard

“Blues connects with the human emotion,” Culpepper reasons. “It’s our deepest emotions, it’s pain and sometimes love. And I think blues is always going to be around. I think it’s always going to recirculate and come back around.”

The blues grew directly from pain. Black workers in the mid-1800s — both slaves and free men — were primarily limited to difficult jobs with no possibility of upward mobility, and they used music to keep a consistent pace at their labor and express their misery. W.C. Handy, crafting such titles as “The St. Louis Blues” and “The John Henry Blues,” established the genre’s commercial potential in the early 1900s, and Mamie Smith‘s 1920 recording “Crazy Blues” became the first blues recorded by a Black woman. New York record executives assumed that only African Americans would appreciate the music and established a “race” records market. When country was subsequently committed to disc, it was frequently referred to as “the white man’s blues.”

While the labels segregated the music in their promotional efforts, the sound itself wasn’t that different. The songs recorded by the father of country music, Jimmie Rodgers, in the 1920s and 1930s overlapped in sound with the music of Robert Johnson in the 1930s. 

“I love Robert Johnson and Hank Williams,” Culpepper says. “I think at the core, both of them [were about] great storytelling, raw emotion, the real man’s music talking about real emotions. You could have a song talking about the bar, and that’s great. They both had songs [about] being with a lover, or just hanging out, or going down a road and feeling great, or a song about just feeling so down low that you don’t even want to be on this Earth.”

Country’s blues influence was particularly evident in Western swing, and it continued to pop up in the music of Willie Nelson (especially in his song “Night Life”); in Southern rock, which would influence such country acts as Travis Tritt, Hank Williams Jr., Confederate Railroad and The Cadillac Three; and in the Texas soul of Lee Roy Parnell.

Much has been made of Chris Stapleton‘s incorporation of outlaw country and R&B over the last decade, but the new acts all say the blues component of his music had an impact on them. 

“A lot of people who are going down the path that I am — you know, country, but also adding a little bit of the old blues and soul influences — would not be able to do what we do without Stapleton,” Myers says. “That artistic flair that he added to country music expanded the lines a little bit, made the box a little bigger.”

Indeed, The Red Clay Strays — which are nominated for two honors at this year’s Academy of Country Music Awards — incorporate a blues thread in their rootsy country sound, and Stephen Wilson Jr.‘s performance of the national anthem before the NFL draft on April 24 in Green Bay, Wis., was a rough-cut, gnarly, acoustic country-blues.

While the sound reflects the current sociopolitical mood, it’s also a reaction to the increasing influence of technology on 21st-century life. Many Americans spend more than half their waking hours tied to an iPhone, a computer and/or a TV. With those impersonal devices commanding people’s attention, it’s natural for consumers to gravitate toward music that more closely reflects humanity and all its imperfections.

“Kids my age, we’re starting to like vintage stuff,” Myers, 17, says. “Old cars, old shoes, old clothes, old fashion — even old lingo is coming back. And especially old music. I think we’ve realized that they did shit better in the ’60s and ’70s. That’s why not only is blues and soul coming back, but also old country. Look at Zach Top. I mean, that’s old, straightforward country, and it makes my heart happy that it’s coming back.”

One of the reasons the blues seem to hang around is that the hard times they address are always present, and the listener is reminded that their heartbreak and heaviness are not unique. Knowing someone else shares their pain frequently helps revive their spirit.

“Blues is a tonic for whatever ails you,” B.B. King once said. “I could play the blues and then not be blue anymore.”

That’s why Culpepper came to appreciate the blues. He heard King, as well as Jimi Hendrix and Albert King, in his household, right alongside Kenny Rogers and Bob Seger. He hopes that, as stylistic walls drop and once-segregated music recombines, his generation of blues-based country artists will provide an emotional tonic for music fans the way that his predecessors influenced him.

“I got an old soul,” Culpepper says, “and I hope that my music is an inspiration for young, upcoming musicians to continue to put that blues and that old rock stuff in new music. That’s my whole [thing]: to be an inspiration.”