Country music is full of songs about drinking. But some artists have given up drinking entirely. We found four country artists who have chosen the sober life, for good.
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Keith Urban
Keith Urban still sings songs about imbibing, even though he’s been sober since 2006. Only a few months after marrying Nicole Kidman, Urban checked himself into the Betty Ford Center to overcome his alcoholism and drug addiction.
Urban, the son of an alcoholic, includes a song, “Break The Chain,” on his latest HIGH album about his family history.
“My dad was an alcoholic, so I grew up in an alcoholic house,” Urban tells The Times. “And it took me a long time to believe I was wired the same. I don’t talk a lot about it because I love my audience being able to just come and have a great time. I’ve nothing against drugs or alcohol. Everyone does what they want to do to have a great time. I just realized I’m allergic to it. Someone said, ‘You have an allergy? What happens when you drink?’ And I said, ‘I break out in cuffs.’”
Charles Kelley
Charles Kelley has been sober since 2022. The Lady A singer was on vacation in Greece when he went out drinking one night, all night, turning off his phone so his wife, Cassie, could not reach him. It was a pivotal point in their marriage and his future.
Kelley knew he needed to go to rehab if he didn’t want a divorce. He flew from Greece to an inpatient center, with Lady A postponing their tour so he could focus on his sobriety.
“It just makes me feel so grateful at how close I came to losing it all,” Kelley tells the LA Times. “And I think the thing that’s hard is to know how much it affected Cassie the most, and my band, and the people around me.”
Kelley later penned “As Far As You Could” as his goodbye letter to alcohol.
Tim McGraw
Tim McGraw hasn’t had a drink since 2008. He vividly recalls the moment when he realized he was no longer able to quit drinking on his own.
“I remember a moment when I was getting out of bed,” McGraw recalls to Esquire. “And going to the liquor cabinet and taking a big shot at 8:00 in the morning, and thinking, ‘I have to wake the kids up.’ I went straight to my wife and said, ‘This is where I’m at.’ I was scared. She just grabbed me and hugged me and changed my life.”
Ashley McBryde
Ashley McBryde has been sober since 2022, although she has kept most of the details of her choice to get sober to herself. But in a heartfelt social media post celebrating three years of sobriety, McBryde says she is much better without alcohol.
“My last time being ‘that guy’ in my social and professional circles,” McBryde writes. “The last panicked phone call for help. The final slip up that caused the intervention from those that love me and the shift in me allowing me to say ‘that’s enough’. The details are known by those who are deserving of such painful information.”
McBryde recently opened up her Redemption Bar, inside Eric Church’s Chief’s, offering non-alcoholic options.
Photo by Hubert Vestil/Getty Images
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