Tim McGraw, 58, Makes Bold Statement About Retiring From Music

Tim McGraw, 58, has faced some major health issues in the past couple of years and it’s making him question whether he can keep going.

Country superstar Tim McGraw recently taped an episode of Tracy Lawrence’s podcast, TL’s Road House, where the two pals reminisced about their careers coming up together in 1990s country music, and talked about getting older and handing the reins off to the younger generation.

McGraw admitted that the past year has been really hard on him physically and he has given serious thought to retiring because it’s getting so hard. McGraw has been candid about his health problems, from knee replacements to back surgeries to torn rotator cuffs, all of which have made him change the way he performs.

“To have almost a year of just sitting there [doing nothing], and I can tell you that after double knee replacements and three back surgeries and now a torn rotator cuff and a ruptured disc, there were times this year that I thought this might be it. This might be time to hang it up,” the 58-year-old singer admitted.

He continued, “I have to be very careful about what I do. What I do do is everything is intentional. I can’t move quickly, there’s no turning real quick to do something. Everything has to be very intentional; everything that I do has to be very methodical. I have to do cold plunges, I have to do infrared saunas. I have to do massages.”

McGraw likened his fitness regimen to that of a professional athlete, almost because he has to be so careful and also has to give himself time to recover in a way that he didn’t have to when he was younger.

“It has changed the way I do a live show…it’s gonna come to a point to where I’m either gonna have to decide to change the way I do a live show to continue to do it or just not do it anymore,” said McGraw.

Because of course, he doesn’t want to disappoint his fans. He wants to still be able to put on the fun-loving, cowboy persona that he has on stage, which he says is a bit different from who he is at home, of course.

McGraw regaled Lawrence with tales of making breakfast and taking his daughters to school when they were younger. You can’t be a “country outlaw” type of person when you’re at home trying to raise a family.

“It’s like I always say, putting a cowboy hat on is like putting Superman’s cape on. It changes your character,” said McGraw, adding, “It’s hard to say this because you don’t want people to think that it’s an act, but it is in a certain degree. It’s another part of your persona.”

And speaking of his daughters — McGraw and wife Faith Hill share Gracie, 28, Maggie, 26, and Audrey, 23 — they are following in their parents’ musical footsteps. Audrey just released her first single and is about to go on tour with a legendary country singer/songwriter. But the dad in McGraw says it’s hard not to want to meddle.

“My youngest daughter, Audrey, just finished her first album. She wrote everything, and the dad in me and the producer in me, when she played the music back for me – ‘it isn’t finished yet, you gotta tune your vocal, you gotta tune these guitars, you gotta add a few more layers.’ And she goes, ‘Dad, that’s not what I want to do. That’s not what kids are wanting to hear these days’,” he recalled with a laugh.