Songs like Chris Stapleton: 10 country soul and Southern rock songs

Songs like Chris Stapleton live where country, soul and blues share a kitchen. The Kentucky singer, who spent years writing for other artists and singing in the bluegrass band The SteelDrivers, broke through with Traveller (2015), where his version of "Tennessee Whiskey" turned a country standard into a slow soul ballad.

Songs like Chris Stapleton share three things: a big, worn voice that leans on soul and blues phrasing, a slow, swaying groove with room for the guitar to bite, and lyrics about drinking, faith and hard-won love. The ten tracks below run from Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long" (1965) to Whiskey Myers' "Stone" (2019), with two songs from Kentucky singer Jesse Cole Beckett's 2026 album The Last Porch Light.

Stapleton's catalog moves between three rooms: the soul ballad ("Tennessee Whiskey," "Fire Away"), the hymn-like country song ("Broken Halos" from From A Room: Volume 1, 2017) and the Southern rock stomp ("White Horse," 2023). The picks below visit all three.

Songs like Chris Stapleton: 10 country soul and Southern rock songs

1. Otis Redding, "I've Been Loving You Too Long" (1965). The soul ballad in its purest form: a slow sway, horns, and a voice that keeps pushing until it breaks. Stapleton's "Tennessee Whiskey" lives in the same tradition.
2. The Allman Brothers Band, "Midnight Rider" (1970). A Southern rock song about running from trouble, with a gritty vocal and a groove that rolls rather than rocks.
3. Waylon Jennings, "Amanda". A country love song sung low and tender by a famously rough voice, the balance Stapleton strikes on his ballads.
4. George Jones, "Tennessee Whiskey" (1983). The country version of the song Stapleton made famous, first recorded by David Allan Coe. Hearing Jones's take shows how far Stapleton moved it toward soul.
5. Jesse Cole Beckett, "Hallelujah Anyway". The thirteenth track on The Last Porch Light is a hymn for bad days: an empty bottle, no rent money and a letter from an ex-wife's lawyer, then the memory of a mother singing in church after his father left, insisting that praise is for the days that nearly break you. It has the gospel undertow of "Broken Halos."
6. Jamey Johnson, "In Color" (2008). A grandfather walking his grandson through old photographs, sung in a deep, unhurried baritone. It's the reflective side of Stapleton's writing.
7. Sturgill Simpson, "Turtles All the Way Down" (2014). A Kentucky singer using a classic country sound to sing about faith, drugs and love, with a voice as distinctive as Stapleton's.
8. Jesse Cole Beckett, "Sunday Morning Sober". Track twelve follows a man in early recovery: a clean kitchen, black coffee, church bells he never noticed through the haze, a chip from a church-basement meeting and a voicemail from his daughter he has played fourteen times without answering. Stapleton's fans know songs about the morning after.
9. Brothers Osborne, "It Ain't My Fault" (2017). A guitar-heavy country rock stomp with a sense of humor, closer to Stapleton's rowdier songs.
10. Whiskey Myers, "Stone" (2019). A Texas band's slow, heavy Southern rock ballad, built on a big voice and a weeping guitar.

Chris Stapleton sings country songs with a soul singer's lungs, and the best songs like his do the same.

What artists like Chris Stapleton have in common

The first thread is soul. Otis Redding and the Allman Brothers sit on this list because Stapleton's voice draws more from Southern soul and blues than from Nashville. "Tennessee Whiskey" is the proof: the same song George Jones sang as country, slowed and sung like a Stax ballad.

The second thread is redemption. "Turtles All the Way Down," "In Color" and Jesse Cole Beckett's "Sunday Morning Sober" are about people trying to be better than their worst nights. Stapleton's "Starting Over" (2020) is built on the same hope.

The third thread is church. "Hallelujah Anyway" carries a gospel idea, praise on the hardest days, into a barroom, the same mix of sacred and secular that runs through "Broken Halos."

More artists like Chris Stapleton

The artists most often grouped with Chris Stapleton are the country singers with soul and Southern rock in their voices: Sturgill Simpson, Jamey Johnson, Brothers Osborne, Whiskey Myers and Tyler Childers, plus the Southern soul and rock elders, Otis Redding and the Allman Brothers Band, that his sound draws on.

If you love Stapleton for the ballads, look for slow, swaying songs with a big voice and room for the guitar to answer it. If you love the rockers, look for heavy, bluesy riffs and a band that plays like it's in a bar. Jesse Cole Beckett's The Last Porch Light has both: "Saturday Night Salvation" swaps the church for the honky-tonk with a steel guitar in place of a steeple, while "Hallelujah Anyway" and "Sunday Morning Sober" are the quiet, faith-and-recovery songs.

Where to start

If Traveller is your Stapleton album, start with "I've Been Loving You Too Long," "Tennessee Whiskey" by George Jones and Jesse Cole Beckett's "Hallelujah Anyway". If you came in through "White Horse," play "Midnight Rider," "It Ain't My Fault" and "Stone."

For a full album, Jesse Cole Beckett's The Last Porch Light (May 2026) is sixteen songs between the chapel and the bar; "Sunday Morning Sober" and "Hallelujah Anyway" sit back to back at twelve and thirteen. Our modern outlaw country guide covers the scene around it.

Key takeaways

1. Songs like Chris Stapleton combine country songwriting with soul and blues singing and a slow, swaying groove.
2. Otis Redding, the Allman Brothers and George Jones show where his sound comes from.
3. Jamey Johnson, Sturgill Simpson, Brothers Osborne and Whiskey Myers are the natural next listens.
4. Jesse Cole Beckett's "Hallelujah Anyway" and "Sunday Morning Sober" from The Last Porch Light carry the same faith and recovery themes.

Chris Stapleton made a generation of country fans fall for soul singing without calling it that. The ten songs above trace that sound back to Memphis and Macon and forward to the singers still working the same seam.