Today, the music industry is a place where expectations often dictate what artists should do and sound like. Of course, in anything like this, however, there’ll be an outlier. That outlier? Sturgill Simpson. He’s too country for rock music, too rock for Nashville, and too much of everything for the regular, old, traditional industry. Simpson doesn’t allow the boundaries that many have set to define him, he plays by his own rules and creates music that’s as authentic as it is unclassifiable.
Being raised in Kentucky, Sturgill grew up immersed in classic country music. His 2013 debut album, “High Top Mountain” echoed the sounds of legends like Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard. His music already could’ve very easily been considered to be “outlaw country”. This was at a time when new country music was mainly falling under the sub-genre of “bro-country”, an extremely repetitive genre that featured an incredibly narrow set of topics. Sturgill set himself apart with distinctive storytelling and originality.
His 3rd album, “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth,” was initially written as a concept album in a letter to his son. Serving as a guide to the world for his son that tells an amazing story, the songs are about Sturgill’s experiences, being in the navy, along with personal history and life lessons he’s picked up along the way. At a time when many other “country” artists started to become incredibly stale, producing repetitive music each time, Sturgill began to break the boundaries of the music industry. He was able to weave soul and rock with country, in what would end up a Grammy-winning country release.
3 years later, in 2019, Sturgill came out with his next and now 4th album, “Sound and Fury”. This album was NOTHING like the others he had previously put out, he absolutely flipped the script with this, diving into a totally new world of music with usage of many diverse instruments and musical techniques. 2 years later came “The Ballad of Dood and Juanita”, yet another boundary shattering album, Simpson himself described the album as “traditional country, bluegrass and mountain music, including gospel and a cappella”. Most recently, in 2024, he released the album “Passage du Desir” under the alter ego “Johnny Blue Skies”.
Although all of these albums are very different from one another, they share a common trait. That trait is authenticity. Sturgill puts more thought and time into his work than many artists do now. He doesn’t need to pretend that he’s lived through the experiences that he writes and sings about, as many others do.
He may never fully belong to country, rock, pop, alternative, bluegrass, or soul. That’s the point. As an outlier, he reminds us all that lasting art comes from those who follow their own path, not what is expected of them.
