Luke Combs Says Two Artists Turned Him Down For Collabs On His New Album: “It Kind Of Bugged Me”

Robby Klein

Who doesn’t want to collaborate with Luke Combs?

Well as it turns out, there are at least two artists who have said no…

Luke is a certified hitmaker these days. One of the top artists in country music, competing only with Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan for the title of the biggest artist in the genre, Luke has scored 19 solo #1 hits and one (“Does To Me” featuring Eric Church) that was a collab, giving him 20 chart-topping singles in the decade since his debut single.

Back in October he was even certified by the RIAA as the top-selling country artist of all time, with his 168 million units sold surpassing Garth Brooks to become the most decorated artist by the organization in country music history (Garth has recently surpassed him once again, though they’re both now behind Morgan Wallen).

With every song he releases becoming a hit, you’d think artists would be lining up to collab with him, if for no other reason than to get a nearly-guaranteed #1 hit.

But as it turns out, that’s not really the case.

Luke is gearing up to drop his sixth studio album, The Way I Am, this coming Friday, March 20th. But at a time when artists are dropping feature-heavy albums where collabs have almost become the norm rather than the exception, this new album from Luke includes only one song that features another artist.

The legendary Alison Krauss makes an appearance on the album on a song called “Ever Mine,” which was co-written by Combs along with Hailey Whitters and Charlie Worsham. But other than that, the album features 21 solo tracks from Luke.

That wasn’t the plan going in though: During a recent interview with GQ, Luke revealed that he had actually reached out to two other artists for a collab on the album, but they turned him down.

Now, Luke doesn’t reveal who the artists are, other than to say that one is a mainstream country artist and one is a pop artist. But he admits that being turned down bothered him at first:

“It kind of bugged me for a while in the sense of well, damn dude, do people think I am a bad guy, or don’t want to be associated with me?”

(For the record, Luke is one of the nicest guys I’ve met and somebody you never hear anything bad about personally – so I think we can eliminate that possibility right off the bat).

While he says he never found out their reasons for turning him down, Luke says he could understand why they would: He’s a hitmaker whose songs almost always top the charts, and other artists have to compete with him not only for a spot at #1 but for radio airplay. And while he was surprised to get rejected, ultimately he was proud of the artists for setting their own boundaries for their career:

“It was really surprising, but also, it was like, good for you.”

Luke has previously revealed that one of the songs on the album that was supposed to be a collab ended up getting left off because “it needs someone else on it” and ultimately, he wasn’t able to find anyone willing to do it.

Honestly, as a fan, I’m not mad at fewer collabs on an album. It seems like these days we get so many feature-heavy albums that it can feel gimmicky at this point. Some songs simply don’t need to be a collab, and it’s clear that it’s more for the artist to work with someone else they like or respect than it really is for the song.

Of course there are also some amazing collabs, and songs that wouldn’t have worked as solo songs, so it’s understandable in some cases. But generally I appreciate an artist having a hit with their own song more than I do when the combined star power pushes a song up the charts.

Still though, it’s a little surprising that there are artists out there who don’t want to collab with Luke Combs…