Mitchell Tenpenny

Mitchell Tenpenny is a Nashville boy who loves pop and R&B. Having grown up amid the city’s music industry—his grandmother was a respected record-label executive—the singer/songwriter wraps timeless country themes like hard drinking (“Alcohol You Later”) and crippling heartache (“Broken Up”) in soulful vocals and purring beats infused with touches of funk. The approach reflects the fact that Tenpenny, like similarly minded country singers Thomas Rhett and Cole Swindell, grew up listening to John Mayer and Justin Timberlake as much as he did the latest country chart-toppers. For him, blending these genres isn’t a self-conscious move but rather an organic outgrowth of his diverse tastes. It’s nevertheless a style into which Tenpenny gradually grew. His 2015 debut, Black Crow, contains loads of heartland-rock guitars and twangy bluegrass. Yet even on a cut like “Cane’s Creek”, featuring the hard-picking SteelDrivers, listeners can hear hints of the sound that becomes fully realised on 2018’s Telling All My Secrets. The success of the record—which debuted at No. 5 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart—was driven in large part by the crossover hit “Drunk Me”. In addition to showcasing Tenpenny’s skills as a songwriter, the country-pop smash spawned a remix from EDM DJ R3HAB that firmly established Tenpenny as an artist not afraid to blur genres.