Traveller, the 2015 solo debut album byChris Stapleton, has been named the Top Country Album of the 21st Century byBillboardmagazine. The trade magazine compiled a special chart ranking the weekly performance of titles on its Top Country Albums chart from the beginning of 2000 through the end of 2024. 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 This comes after the magazine revealed thatKenny Chesneyis the top country artist of the 21st century based on the same chart as well as the Top Country Songs list. Stapleton's debut solo effort has had quite a chart run, reaching No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart on Nov. 21, 2015, where it spent a total of 29 weeks. It also spent two weeks on top of the all-genreBillboard200 chart. The album features a number of hit songs, including "Tennessee Whiskey," which topped the Hot Country Songs list for two weeks in 2015, as well as "Nobody to Blame," which became the singer's first of seven top 10 hits on the Country Airplay chart, perBillboard. Prior to his breakout success as a solo artist, Stapleton did time in two different bands—singing in the bluegrass group the SteelDrivers as well as the rock act the Jompson Brothers. He also had success as a songwriting, penningKenny Chesney's "Never Wanted Nothing More" andLuke Bryan's "Drink a Beer." Related: George Strait's Relationship With Chris Stapleton Extends Beyond the Road TheTravellerwas inspired by a tragedy Stapleton experienced two years before the album's release. "I lost my dad in October 2013 and did a little bit of soul-searching. My wife was kind enough to buy me an old Jeep. We flew out to Phoenix and drove it all the way back to Nashville through the desert. I thought a lot about music and my dad, and the things that he would have liked that I should be doing," he told writerChuck Dauphinin a2015 interviewforBillboard. "Out of that, I actually wrote the song 'Traveller' driving down Interstate 40 through New Mexico. That became the cornerstone for the record and wound up being the title track. My wife dug in deep on my catalog of songs, and we met with Brian Wright at the label. He helped me sift through the songs a little bit more, played some things for [producer] Dave [Cobb], and decided to cut six songs. We called Brian right up and asked him to listen to the sides and kept on going, and the record that you hear is what happened." This Singer's Album Was Just Named Top Country Album of the 21st Centuryfirst appeared on Parade on May 28, 2025
