Music / Luke Combs

A Country Music singer from Asheville, North Carolina. Luke Albert Combs (born March 2, 1990) first released his music independently in 2014, starting with a pair of extended plays and the song "Hurricane", which got heavy sales and notched the country music charts based off said sales. This initial buzz led to him signing to Columbia Records Nashville in 2016, who promptly shipped "Hurricane" to country radio.

Due to the combination of heavy airplay from iHeartMedia stations and the existing buzz, his debut release "Hurricane" topped the Country Airplay charts in 2017, making him the first male artist to have a multi-week #1 with his debut single since Darius Rucker did so in 2008. "Hurricane" quickly proved to be no fluke, as the followups "When It Rains It Pours" and "One Number Away" both topped that chart too. Columbia re-issued his debut album This One's for You in 2018 with a few bonus tracks... including "She Got the Best of Me", which in late 2018 made him only the third artist in country music history to have his first four singles all go to #1 there.

Combs's music has been widely praised for his strong singing voice, sharp lyricism, and his combination of traditional country and mainstream country-pop influences.

---

Discography:

• The Way She Rides (EP) (2014)
• Can I Get an Outlaw (EP) (2014)
• This One's for You (EP) (2015)
• This One's for You (full album) (2017)
• This One's for You Too (re-release with bonus tracks) (2018)
• The Prequel (EP) (2019)
• What You See Is What You Get (full album) (2019)

---

Tropes present in his work:

• Age-Progression Song: "Even Though I'm Leaving" begins with the narrator as a child, goes on to him as a young man enlisting in the military, and ends with him at his dying father's bedside.
• Bowdlerise: The first two words of the line "bitchin' and moanin'" are muted in the radio edit of "When It Rains It Pours".
• Break-Up Song: "When It Rains It Pours" is an upbeat take on this, since he has a series of positive events ensue after the breakup (winning money on a scratch-off, winning a trip to Panama City, and not having to deal with his "ex-future-mother-in-law").
• Call-Back: The video for "She Got the Best of Me" contains visual references to his previous singles and album cuts.
• The Cover Changes the Gender: Averted with his cover of "Fast Car", which keeps the line "I work in the market as a checkout girl" from the original version.
• Dartboard of Hate: "Cold as You"
  A bunch of good time numbers on the stall door
  A picture of you on a dart board
  Them cinder block walls ain't ever been cleaned
  Still ain't as dirty as you done me
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • "Beer Never Broke My Heart" has the narrator listing all the things that cause him stress, then concluding that beer is the only thing he can rely on to make him happy.
  • "Cold as You". He tells his ex that he's drinking "beer almost as cold as you" to erase her memory.
• Dual-Meaning Chorus: "Even Though I'm Leaving" has this with the lyric "Even though I'm leavin', I ain't goin' nowhere" between a son and father: first when the son is scared at night and comforted by his father, then when the grown son goes off to war, and then when the father is on his deathbed.
• Early-Bird Cameo: "Beautiful Crazy" got a surge of downloads when This One's for You Too was released, causing it to crack Top 10 on the Hot Country Songs charts before it was even a single.
• The Four Chords of Pop: "She Got the Best of Me" is IV-I-vi-V.
• Lyrical Cold Open: "When It Rains It Pours"
• Negatives as a Positive: "Beautiful Crazy" for his wife, Nicole. In one interview, a DJ asked him how Nicole feels about the song. When Luke said she loved it, the DJ exclaimed, "I can't believe you called your wife crazy...and got away with it!" The chorus is:
  Beautiful, crazy
  She can't help but amaze me
  The way that she dances
  Ain't afraid to take chances
  And wears her heart on her sleeve
  Yeah, she's crazy
  But her crazy's beautiful to me
• Ode to Intoxication: "Beer Never Broke My Heart". He drinks because it's one of the only things that he can count on, unlike unfaithful women, bad fishing days, bad bosses, etc.
• The One That Got Away: In "She Got the Best of Me", he can't stop thinking about her, so he plays out his frustrations on his guitar in an attempt to get her off his mind.
• Record Producer: Scott Moffatt, formerly of Canadian Boy Band The Moffatts. Chip Matthews took over for some of the tracks on What You See Is What You Get.
• Re-release the Song: His debut single "Hurricane" originally made some noise on independent formats and digital sales, so Columbia Records officially re-released it to radio in late 2016.
• Serial Escalation: His first four singles all went to #1, so how does he top that? By having the fifth single become the first single since 2004 to spend seven weeks at #1 on the airplay charts.
• Silly Love Songs: "Lovin' on You"
• Singer Name Drop: He name-drops Brooks & Dunn before their part on "1, 2 Many".

---