There’s no denying that Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs are country music’s two biggest stars. Zach Bryan, of course, doesn’t consider himself a country music artist, and he largely operates outside of the industry entirely, but he’s in the conversation as well.
Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen have had parallel careers in many ways, both having their first hits right around the same time. Morgan’s debut single “The Way I Talk” was released to country radio on September 12th, 2016, but it was first featured on his debut EP released in the summer of 2016 and later included on his 2018 album, If I Know Me, which cracked the Top 30 at country radio.
Luke released his breakout hit “Hurricane” on October 3rd, 2016, as part of his EP This One’s for You, and it was later featured on his 2017 debut album of the same name. He put it out independently in 2015, and it went #1 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart in May of 2017.
The rest, as they say, is history, and they now both sell out stadiums all over the world, although, Luke doesn’t view it as a heavyweight battle, or some kind of race to the top.
Despite having radically different music styles, with Combs’ harkening back to the turn of the century offerings of the late 1990s and early 2000s and Wallen spearheading the push of pop/trap elements through the use of his highly-criticized 808 beats and hip-hop-inspired production, the two are nearly inseparable when it comes to discussing country music today. Of course, this is due in large part to the fact that they not only debuted within one year of each other but also due to the fact that they’re two of the most successful country artists in the history of the genre.
Of course, Wallen continues to dominate nearly any chart that he can conceivably top, highlighted by the fact he holds the record for most songs charted in a single week on the all-genre Billboard 100 with 37 entries, he became the first artist to spend at least 10 weeks atop the all-genre Billboard’s 200 chart with three consecutive albums and additionally he’s spent the eight-most weeks in history atop the Billboard 200.
As for Combs, he’s also gotten his fair share of accolades over the past few years. Along with 19 career #1 hits on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart and back-t0-back CMA Entertainer of the Year wins in 2021 and 2022, the “Hurricane” singer recently surpassed Garth Brooks as the highest-selling country artist in history with over 168 million units sold.
During an interview with Popcast’s Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli of The New York Times, Combs was asked about the competition, or lack thereof, between him and Morgan, and he says he doesn’t feel like that at all. Luke is friends with Morgan, they toured together in their earlier years, and while they have been on a similar trajectory and timeline, Luke says he’s “running [his] own race,” and while he believes a certain amount of “healthy competition” is good, he doesn’t see why people have to pit them against each other.
He also mentioned Zach Bryan as someone who they get pitted against, and he doesn’t feel like it needs to be a constant battle because “they’re all doing really well”:
“I mean, dude, listen. Me and Morgan have been on tour together. It feels like everybody but us plays that game of like, who has got this, who is releasing that, who is doing this and who is doing that.
And I just don’t think me and him see it that way in the sense of, I don’t feel like I’m competing against him and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t feel like he’s competing against me in any way. I’m running my own race, maybe he’s on the same track that I’m on, but the finish line isn’t the same. You know, I think there’s healthy competition you can have inside your own mind of, I want to put out the best music I can.
I think it’s good… and the Zach Bryan thing too, it’s like, everybody’s trying to, ‘This guy versus this guy, and I don’t like this guy.’ And everybody kind of picks sides like it’s some sort of battle thing. And I’m like, seems like we’re all kind of doing really well.”
I think all three of them have contributed hugely to the current popularity of country music, and the fact that all three of them, with their very different styles, can be attributed to the current success of country goes to show how much it has grown. There’s room for so many different style, and as Luke points out, they very much all have their own styles:
“If you picked the right Morgan song, the right my song and the right Zach song and played them back to back for someone who had never heard any of us, they’d be like, ‘There’s no way any of these guys are in the same genre.’ And I think that’s awesome for country music.”
Amen to that, Luke…
Ultimately, Morgan and Luke in particular have proven that there is room for more than one superstar at the top of country, and I think fans are still waiting on that collab because it would probably be one of the biggest songs of the decade. They’ve both had incredible careers already, and surely that is only going to continue for decades to come because they’re both generational artists.
The full podcast is available below.
Luke’s sixth studio album The Way I Am is set for release on March 20th.
The Way I Am Tracklist
- “Back in the Saddle”
- “My Kinda Saturday Night”
- “Days Like These”
- “15 Minutes”
- “Alcohol of Fame”
- “Daytona 499”
- “The Way I Am”
- “Wish Upon Whiskey”
- “Soon As I Get Home”
- “Rethink Some Things”
- “Giving Her Away”
- “Seeing Someone”
- “Sleepless in a Hotel Room”
- “I Ain’t No Cowboy”
- “Ever Mine” (feat. Alison Krauss)
- “Can’t Tell Me I’m Wrong”
- “Miss You Here”
- “Tell ‘Em About Tonight”
- “Be By You”
- “The Me Part of You”
- “Rich Man”
- “A Man Was Born”
