Tucker Wetmore Is Building Country's Global Superstar Blueprint

Most country artists wait until they’ve already conquered Nashville and the U.S. charts before they think about going international. Tucker Wetmore isn’t most country artists.

At 26, the Washington state-born musician is executing what feels like a deliberate, almost counterintuitive strategy: grow stateside and overseas at the exact same pace. While his“Brunette”just hit No. 1 on Country Airplay and his debut album What Not To climbed into the top 15 on the all-genre Billboard 200, Wetmore’s current The Brunette World Tour has already hit the United Kingdom and Europe. He even carved out studio time in Switzerland. This isn’t a victory lap overseas—it’s part of his original design.

“I feel like in the past, especially with country, [artists will have] grown so much in the States and then they’re five years into their career, a couple of albums in, and they’re like,‘All right, let’s go take this thing worldwide,'”Wetmore explains.“They’re kind of playing catch-up, taking steps back [into] smaller venues.”He’s chosen a different path: simultaneous growth in both markets, refusing to trade momentum for geography.

What makes this work is authenticity—something Wetmore has made his calling card. Onstage, he’s a self-described“goofball”who gyrates to the music, talks candidly to crowds, and doesn’t apologize for being exactly who he is.“If you can’t get onstage and be exactly who you are, then you’re not doing you justice,”he says. It’s the same philosophy that defines his music: rapid-fire lyrics on“Brunette”(which he admits reminds him of trying to keep up with Eminem bars as a kid), piano medleys spanning Beethoven to Jerry Lee Lewis, and deeply personal songs like“What Not To,”which touches on his father leaving when Wetmore was 11.

That vulnerability, paired with his refusal to play small, seems to be working. In late April, while performing a sold-out three-show run in London, Thomas Rhett surprised him on video with news that Wetmore won the Academy of Country Music Award for new male artist of the year—his mother, Sia, presented the award to him onstage. Next up: the Nissan Stadium stage at CMA Fest this summer, a step up from the Hard Rock stage where he played just two years ago to 8,500 people who shut down Broadway.

“I think that’s just a testament of trust in the process; keep doing what you’re doing,”Wetmore reflects. For a guy building a worldwide sound in a small-town genre, that philosophy isn’t just working—it’s reshaping what it means to break a country artist globally.