News of collaborations with Chris Stapleton are sweeping across the music industry. The sought after country artist has joined several artists including Adele, Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson on highly anticipated duets.
Today, for the first time in six years, Adele has released new music. Her album, 30, features her single, “Easy On Me,” which has become a beloved track by fans, who got to listen to it before the full album was dropped. With great excitement, it has been announced that Chris Stapleton will be joining Adele on a duet of the song. Although this version was not included on the album, it will be playing on country radio, starting today, and it is available on YouTube. The new song has been played every hour across iHeartMedia stations.
In 12 tracks, this album tells her stories and experiences around turning 30, along with the fairly recent separation and divorce from Simon Konecki.
According to Billboard, for the first time, this collaboration between Adele and Stapleton could earn them a Grammy-award-winner spot on the country music charts. The original version already reached a record-breaking number of streams, the day it was released.
Although Stapleton may not have known Adele as an artist in 2011, when she covered a song he co-wrote titled, “If It Hadn’t Been For Love,” which became a bonus track on her 21 record, he has become quite familiar with her talent since then.
Another artist making a splash in the music industry is Taylor Swift, as she continues to re-release her previous albums as Taylor’s Version. This time around, she is recording these songs the way she originally intended them to sound, without the unwanted influence of a record label.
One of these tracks, “I Bet You Think About Me,” was included in her “from the vault” series for Red (Taylor’s Version), with added vocals by Stapleton. This song, written more than a decade ago with Lori McKenna, was always intended to be light-hearted and fun.
“We wanted this song to be like a comedic, tongue-in-cheek, funny, not caring what anyone thinks about you sort of breakup song because there are a lot of different types of heartbreak songs on Red— some of them are very sincere, some of them very Stoic and heartbreaking and sad — we wanted this to be the moment where you’re like, ‘I don’t care about anything,’” she said as she explained the meaning behind this song.
The duet’s don’t stop there for Stapleton. In addition to Adele and Swift, he recently joined forces with fellow country artist, Kelly Clarkson for the first time to release a Christmas single, “Glow.” Together, these singers created a bright track for the holiday season with entrancing harmonies.
In an interview with Bobby Bones, Clarkson admitted that she was nervous Stapleton would turn down her request, but luckily, he did not.
“I just feel like everybody asks him to sing, and I get really nervous asking because I’ve been turned down a lot with singing with people,” Clarkson shared. “So, I got really nervous, but I was so excited he said yes, and like I said he turned the music around so quickly and his voice is just magical.”
When Stapleton isn’t working on collaborations, he is working on his own music, which has earned him great recognition. Recently, during the CMA Awards, he was named winner of Song of the Year, Single of the Year, Male Vocalist of the Year and Album of the Year.
