Country singer and songwriter Mitchell Tenpenny made his name in Nashville with a sound heavily informed by modern pop and R&B. But when he hits the stage, his audience gets to glimpse another side of his sound. While the state-of-the-art production on Tenpenny's records includes a sophisticated tapestry of electronic textures, his stage setup is much simpler, based around the time-honored guitars-and-drums format. This approach makes Tenpenny's rock 'n' roll influences come to the fore. But whether he's performing his first hit single, 2017's "Drunk Me," or any of his other tunes, Tenpenny is always able and willing to deploy some serious soulful vocal turns too, like when he dips into his falsetto for an especially emotive moment. And it's even more impactful in a live setting.

Mitchell Tenpenny Background

It seems natural that Nashville-born Mitchell Tenpenny has made a career in country music. His grandmother Donna Hilley was a country music biz bigwig, the CEO of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, though she passed years before Tenpenny's first recordings were released. His debut album, Black Crow, arrived in 2015, and included a guest appearance by neo-bluegrass heroes The SteelDrivers. Soon after, Tenpenny's talents as a songwriter for other artists became clear when "If the Boot Fits," which he co-wrote for Granger Smith, became a hit. The Linden Ave EP followed in 2017, making major inroads for Tenpenny with an appearance in the upper rungs of Billboard's Heatseeker chart. Next thing you know, Tenpenny's gotten himself signed to Columbia Nashville, and his first single for the label, "Drunk Me," starts making some major moves up the charts. Tenpenny's 2018 LP, Telling All My Secrets, marked his full-length Columbia debut, auguring even bigger things for the man from Music City.