High Tides, Deep Dives and Holy Water: Inside Tucker Wetmore's Ascent From Football Prodigy to Country Music Star

It's no secret that TikTok has drastically altered the country music landscape, with the social media platform serving as a springboard for viral, genre-blending smashes such as Shaboozey's ‘A Bar Song (Tipsy)’ and Dasha's ’Austin (Boots Stop Workin’)’.

Tucker Wetmore emerged out of that same space, with the Kalama, Washington native amassing a colossal following courtesy of his innovative, sleek recipe of honeyed melodies, relatable lyricism and trap-infused, 808-fuelled beats.

Before Tucker had released a song, snippets for ‘Wine Into Whiskey’ and ‘Wind Up Missin’ You’ spread like wildfire across TikTok. They finally dropped earlier this year, and the latter currently sits in the Top 20 at Country Radio, with both tracks slotting into the Billboard Hot 100 - a staggering feat for an artists’ first two songs.

Although this provided an invaluable boost of momentum heading into the launch of his solo career, Tucker Wetmore would've been forgiven for battling with the weight of expectation, having so many eyes on him before he'd even dropped his debut single.

“Honestly, I still feel the pressure”, Tucker admits, “I set the bar pretty high at the beginning. I'm pretty hard on myself when it comes to a lot of things, but then I'll sit back and realise, ‘No, that was a blessing, and that was a kickstart’. It started the wheels moving”.

Now, Tucker Wetmore is readying his debut EP, Waves on a Sunset, and one of the most striking qualities of the eight-song project is the depth and consideration that has gone into its creation. Sometimes, an EP - particularly a debut EP - will act as a largely incohesive sampler, primarily designed to gauge fan interest ahead of the album. A means to an end, rather than a complete work of art in itself.

Waves on a Sunset, by contrast, has a fully formed narrative, a myriad of textures and a level of care poured into it, all of which combines to help Tucker Wetmore transcend any restrictive labels assigned to him off the back of his first two singles. When an artist blows up on TikTok, the assumption is often that their next moves will be dictated by chasing another viral moment, churning out neat, bitesize earworms that don't carry much depth or substance beneath the glossy exterior.

On Waves on a Sunset, Tucker Wetmore transcends the tag of ‘hitmaker’, and cements himself as an artist. Tucker might've burst onto the scene with a slick, R&B-country sound, but Waves on a Sunset showcases his true range. He's unapologetically neo-traditional on the infectious ‘Break First’, which will delight fans of his Twisters: The Album stand-out, ‘Already Had It’, while he strips it all back and delivers a classic, early 2000s ballad on the intimate EP closer, ‘Mister Miss Her’.

Tucker reflects, “My whole thought behind the EP was, ‘How do we make it fresh, but also relatable?’ ‘Mister Miss Her’ is just a country breakup song. I don't want to be put in a box. I don't want people to say, ‘Oh, this is the only type of music he's going to make, and this is what you can expect from him’. No, I will do more trappier stuff, and I will do country stuff, because I love music. Nobody listens to one kind of music, because there's so much beauty in music, across all genres...It's always country, but I'm not opposed to flirting with other genres”. With a twinkle in his eye, Tucker excitedly adds a statement of intent, “Nobody's seen who I am yet...the EP is scratching the surface of what's coming”.

Aside from demonstrating his musical fluidity, Waves on a Sunset highlights Tucker Wetmore's keenness to piece together an overarching storyline through this body of work, with each song playing a key role in the construction of the EP's core narrative. We progress from the rose-tinted romance of ‘Silverado Blue’ and ‘You, Honey’ to the darker, heartbroken musings of ‘What Would You Do?’ and ‘Mister Miss Her’.

“It was all very intentional”, Tucker confirms, “I hope people really dive into the purpose behind every song placement, especially at the end. When the album comes next year, they'll see, ‘Oh, that's why he chose ‘Mister Miss Her’. I'm going to do something with the album too, where it's like, ‘Oh, this is why’. It's all storytelling. It's almost like songwriting within songs. I'm not going to say what my whole idea behind the album is yet, but what is coming on Friday is very intentional”.

The crux of the EP - and, it seems, his forthcoming album, which is being lined up for 2025 - is captured in the dichotomy between ‘Wine Into Whiskey’ and ‘What Would You Do?’ The first finds Tucker blaming himself for the breakdown of a relationship, but by the time we reach ‘What Would You Do?’ towards the end of the EP, he's received his moment of clarity, and instead accuses his ex of being at fault.

“They complement each other”, Tucker stresses, “They weren't written in the same session, but they definitely complement each other - and very purposefully, too. I was looking through the lens of being in a narcissistic relationship...I wanted to give people something to listen to about that kind of situation. At the beginning of the end of a narcissistic relationship, you're automatically going to think, ‘Oh, I did everything wrong. I'm sorry, I'm sorry’. That's how a narcissist will make you feel. Then ‘What Would You Do?’ is having the realisation when the fog clears, and you're like, ‘No, actually, I was not acting out-of-order. I wasn't perfect, but I wasn't the bad guy you painted me as’. I'm like, ‘What would you do if I caught you doing this?’ It's about putting yourself in my shoes”.

The elaborate layers and attentive thought that Tucker Wetmore puts into his music can seemingly be traced back to two central influences. The first is his mother, who motivated him to start writing music as a way of expressing his frustration and confusion, when a severe injury halted his burgeoning college football career.

Tucker recalls, “I started playing piano when I was 11, and then I put it down to focus on sports at high school. Then, I went to college and ended up breaking my leg for the third time. I dropped out of school and moved back home. I didn't even go to any of my finals. That was a sign that I wasn't where I needed to be. A couple of months later, my foot was in a cast. I'd finished surgery and all that stuff, and I was working at a coffee shop. I was just super lost, and I didn't know what I was doing with my life at all. I felt useless, because I'd had so much purpose”.

It took some nuggets of wisdom and gentle encouragement from Tucker Wetmore's mother to give him a renewed sense of direction, “I sat my mom down two or three months later, and I was like, ‘Hey ma, I'm so lost right now. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't feel good’. Then she pointed me in the direction of music again. She was like, ‘That used to be your therapy. That used to be the way you got things off your chest, and the way you set your mind free when it was racing’. She said, ‘Go sit in front of the piano, go pick up your guitar’. This was in 2019. I wrote my first ever song that night. It was a God-awful song, but I wrote it. Then I started writing a bunch by myself, and I didn't look back. Eight months later, I was like, ‘Ma, I want to do this. I want to do this, for real’. This was during COVID, and she was like, ‘Just go do it. What's stopping you? What do you have to lose?’ I said, ‘Nothing, ma’, and she goes, ‘Do it. You have my full support’. I was like, ‘Alright, let's roll’. That's when I moved to Nashville”.

Although his mother was instrumental, it's also evident how, throughout his journey so far, Tucker Wetmore has never shied away from being vulnerable and candid. The same honesty of admitting he was struggling to his mom is what colours much of Waves on a Sunset, whether Tucker is crooning forlornly about a toxic relationship on ‘What Would You Do?’ or expressing his gratitude on ‘When I Ain't Lookin’.

The latter hints at his second pivotal source of inspiration, aside from his mother, which is his faith. ‘When I Ain't Lookin’ is the most pertinent example of this, with Tucker Wetmore tipping his Embry cap to all the divinely ordained life lessons and guidance he's received when he needed them the most. Tucker emphasises, “This is the most important thing to me. I'm not perfect, I'm far from it. I'm human. I will mess up. I will stray away from my faith sometimes, without meaning to, and sometimes God will be like, ‘Nope, snap back’, and I'll be like, ‘Yes, sir’. But it is very important to me, and I feel like nothing thrives without His hand, nothing is worth it without His hand. It's a main focus of mine. Not to sit here and act like I'm perfect and I do no wrong - I definitely do - but then I got Him, I got His grace and I got His forgiveness and that's what makes it all worth it, truly”.

This outlook helps to explain why, even when Tucker Wetmore is weaving cautionary tales about heartbreak, narcissism and longing, there's always an underlying sense of warmth and gratitude. Tucker constantly emits this comforting feeling of amiability and kindness, which comes to the fore on tracks such as ’You, Honey’.

When discussing the sweet ode, Tucker endearingly professes, “I love love, I love everybody and I love everything - and that's just who I am. I want to portray love to my people”.

As a result, Tucker Wetmore quickly becomes someone you can't help but root for - not that he really needs it. The ‘Break First’ singer-songwriter is ticking off milestone after milestone. He's spent much of 2024 out on the road with Luke Bryan, and last month, he made his Opry debut and delivered his first performance at Colorado's iconic Red Rocks Amphitheatre. In 2025, Tucker will make the hallowed trip across The Pond for C2C Festival dates in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany, as well as linking up with Thomas Rhett for his Better in Boots run.

With the dizzying number of successes and accolades Tucker Wetmore continues to amass, it feels like an inevitability that his trajectory is locked firmly onto the upper echelon of country music. However, amidst this all, as Waves on a Sunset shows, Tucker is a far cry from an artist that's going to churn out Platinum-certified chart-toppers for the sake of it. There is an intricately thought-out plan and process behind each track, lyric and note on his new EP.

He's always been acutely self-aware, as we see in the opening to ‘Wind Up Missin’ You’, the song that started it all, “I know it might look like / Another ball-cap on a barstool / Underneath a PBR light” - which, for many fans, were the first lyrics they ever heard from Tucker Wetmore. As these introductory lines remind us, the chances are, whatever you think you're going to get from Tucker, he'll give you so much more - more depth, more versatility and more emotion. In today's era of out-of-the-blue TikTok hits and fleeting viral moments, the mantle of country music's next big star for 2025 has been contentious. But now, if you ask us - to quote the man himself - it looks like we're done looking.

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