Justin Moore

Justin Moore can go toe-to-toe with any of his hick-hop and bro-country peers when it comes to delivering party-hearty hits about boozy good times. (“You Look Like I Need a Drink” is just one of Moore’s many memorable song titles.) Yet the singer and guitarist’s love of country-music tradition may be what makes his otherwise modern brand of country so engaging. Born in 1984 in Arkansas, Moore grew up on old-school Nashville greats like Hank Williams, Jr. and David Allan Coe, learning the value of clever rhymes, tightly crafted tunes and a solidly working-class sensibility. He paid his respect to those heroes when he namechecked them—along with Southern rock icons Lynyrd Skynyrd—on “Small Town USA”, a punchy ode to living simply that became one of several big hits on Moore’s 2009 self-titled debut. While there were many more fun-loving songs on 2011’s Outlaws Like Me—his first in a run of No. 1 albums on Billboard’s country chart—and later efforts like 2016’s Kinda Don’t Care, Moore’s been unafraid of showing his softer side. With songs like “If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away”, a 2011 hit about missing loved ones, and “The Ones That Didn’t Make It Back Home”, a poignant song on 2019’s Late Nights and Longnecks about fallen soldiers and the holes they leave in their communities, he made sure there were some tears in those beers, too.