Getting his start with 2017’s This One’s For You, Luke Combs’ early work stuck to familiar country music tropes like drinking beer and partying. Last year, the 35-year-old father of two took a hard left turn with Fathers & Sons, with tear-jerking lyrics reflecting his experiences of parenthood. Combs’ fifth studio album marked a priority shift in not only his music, but in his personal life. Recently, the “Fast Car” hitmaker opened up about balancing fatherhood and music.
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Luke Combs Admits His Latest Record Was “Selfish”
Released last June, Fathers & Sons ranks among Luke Combs’ personal favorites in his musical catalogue. In a new interview with People, however, he acknowledged that commercially speaking, the record was “easily my least successful album that I’ve had.”
He’s okay with that, though. “It’s not really something that bothers me, though, because of the reason that I did it,” Combs said.
He added, “At its core, it was probably more of a selfish endeavor for me. It was something that I felt like I wanted to do and something that I wanted to say.”
“I Want to Be Home With My Kids”
For Luke Combs, Fathers & Sons reflects his shifting priorities. Despite his ever-rising star, the “Hurricane” singer scaled back on live performances in 2025 to maximize his time with wife Nicole and their two sons, 2-year-old Tex and Beau, 1. As a result, fans have just 14 more opportunities to see him perform live before year’s end.
[RELATED: Luke Combs Proves He Can Do It All with Electric (and Unlikely) Stagecoach Collaborations]
“I want to be home with my kids,” Combs said. “I want to see my kids grow up and I want them to know that they’re important to me.”
Inevitably, that means reducing his time on the road—a decision, he says, that could have proved fatal earlier in his career. “I feel like country music for a long time has been, ‘Let’s tour every year as hard as we can tour’ while it’s hot,” he told People. “But I’m now like, ‘Why can’t you tour really hard, build a really great fan base, care about them, support them, give them exclusive things, give them great experiences and let them understand that you care about them,’ and then if you do want some time for you, you can tell them, ‘I can’t tour this year.’ I wanted to get to the point where I could do that, and it not be career suicide.”
Featured image y Erika Goldring/Getty Images
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