For an artist that has only put out a single song in the last two years, Tyler Childers might be the most talked about musician in all of country music currently. With massive social media recognition and no marketing on his side, it is a phenomenon that his music has become as popular once again as it has. Childers may be the most popular artist on social media, and has barely put out any self promotions or social media, except for a few teaser videos for his new album that is set to come out on September 30th. Childers even has an unreleased song, “Jersey Giant” that is one of the top songs used on TikTok currently, and can only be found in full on Soundcloud.
Childers has also made waves with his massive life changes. Childers began his career writing songs detailing drug use and a hard lifestyle. This is evident in songs such as Whitehouse Road, with lines like “Get me drinking that moonshine, Get me higher than the grocery bill” and “We been sniffing that cocaine, Aint nothin better when the wind cuts cold”. This is just one of many examples of Childers honing in on a raunchy lifestyle of drug use and vices within his lyrics. Despite Childers standing out in a genre full of lyrics with vices by having more meaningful songwriting and a unique voice, he still seemed like yet another country artist that would sing about drinking and trucks for his whole career. Then came a complete change. Childers dropped a 9 song album titled “Long Violent History”, with only one song having vocals on it. When his fanbase was looking to hear his voice and hear more Southern staples, he goes the other way and gives them one song with lyrics that don’t exactly line up with your traditional Southern conservative viewpoints, which describes most of his fans. As a man from Appalachia, Tyler Childers is one of the last artist one would think to take a stand for racial equality in his music, yet there it was. It was a total 180 from his previous music, and helped start a very important conversation among country music fans and citizens of Appalachia about racial equality and whether we as a society are paying enough attention to the struggles of people of color.
I had the chance to talk to a source from Nashville, a music rep named HB Riordan. When asked about her thoughts on the recent resurgence of Tyler Childers, HB said, “Country fans seemed to have never lost respect for Childers which was well deserved and earned after his album “Purgatory” blew up in 2017. His press came back in full throttle as he announced another album and released a gospel like single called “Angel Band” which seemed to have given us a glimpse of a newer and cleaner version of Tyler Childers and the musical direction he is now taking.”
It is this background that makes Childers’ recent music so important. Fans have been waiting for well over a year for new music, and he has emerged from this hiatus a completely changed man, looking much skinnier and commenting on how he had found sobriety and adopted a sober lifestyle. This is some of the biggest news in country music, as Childers is seen by many as one of the saviors of country music after many years of the genre going towards pop country. Childers was able to bring the genre back to it’s roots, and his new album will bring his fans a side of him they haven’t seen much of before, which is gospel. Childers has stated that he will be releasing a triple album, with three versions of 8 songs, all gospel music.