Chris Stapleton: His ‘Ultimate Goal’ In Music

Last year, Chris Stapleton Starting Over; he notes that he tried not to let the success of his previous albums put too much pressure on him.

Chris told us, "You get to make a first record in relative anonymity and kind of this vacuum. You've had 15 years to write songs for it and you get to cherry pick and do all these things. I think it's perfectly human that you become aware of expectations as you go along, but I very much try to ignore them because I'm not sure that's a healthy space to be making music."

He explained, "If you're thinking about previous sales or if you're thinking about awards or any of those kind of things, if those are your goals in music, I think maybe you're missing the point."

Stapleton adds what his real goals are when putting out new music, he offered, "That's what I want out of music, I want the experience of the music and I want to bring an experience to people listening to music and in a way that we can have a connection with other human beings."

It's that connection that is so important to Chris. "That's the ultimate goal for me, and that allows those things to kind of be deeply secondary expectations and pressure or celebrity or whatever you want to throw in the pot, that's extra. If you let those other things start taking importance over the musical part, I think that's a mistake."