Travis Collins

Australian country singer Travis Collins has a knack for crafting powerful songs, whether they be tender-hearted ballads or blasts of guitar-fuelled honky-tonk. Born in Cessnock, New South Wales, Collins has been kicking up the dust since he started busking at just 11 years old. He delivered on that early promise some years later with his assured 2005 debut, Start The Car, which included the poignant, piano-driven “I Was Wrong”. But it was on 2015’s Wired that he cemented his reputation as one of the genre’s rising stars, asserting himself on a pumped-up version of John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy”. Collins’ hearty voice is the force behind his music, and it adds emotional heft to songs like 2016’s moving “Call Me Crazy”—written in the wake of his father-in-law’s suicide—and 2017’s Australia-celebrating duet with Amber Lawrence, “Our Backyard”. His voice powers the good-time tunes, too, like 2018 stadium-rocker “Happy”, and shines bright on soulful tracks like “Damn Girl”, from 2020’s Wreck Me.