Kip Moore Is Finally Living
Discover Entertainment
The country artist’s sprawling sixth album, Solitary Tracks, is restless, rowdy, and deeply introspective. He took us inside the transformative years that got him there.
Kip Moore has an idea for how I should start this article. “It’s a funny story,” he promises. He’s in Hawaii, been there for more than a month, getting right after another long, grueling, and gratifying year of touring before he embarks on another. Surfing, writing, sitting still. He takes this time seriously. Has to. “I made a pact with myself a few years back that I can’t give in to everything,” he explains. It goes like this: “Fuck that—I’m living.”
For years, Moore was a yes-man with his own career. “Every time I got the call to do to something that my team said I should do, I would jump,” he says. The highs were euphoric—he notched five top-five singles on country radio, headlined big rooms, got nominated for a few big awards, had his back catalog explode overseas, and became a stadium artist abroad. But there were lows, too. His reception on U.S. airwaves cooled, and, worse, Moore felt increasingly isolated. “I realized how much I’d neglected people, relationships, and community,” he says.
Are you ready for the story now? Because Moore is right. It does work for a pretty good lede.
In 2018, the breakneck near decade came to a head. “I felt like I was dying,” he recalls. He took a break, the first long one of his career. Wound up right where he is now, in Hawaii. And then the phone rang—an offer to do the halftime show for the AFC Championship. It was the most money Moore had ever been offered for a performance, by a lot. He felt nothing. “I said, ‘Well, I’m having coffee, so I don’t think I’m gonna be there.’ ” His team couldn’t believe it—and when his phone rang the next day, the fee had gone up, also by a lot. Problem was, as he told his manager over the phone, he was by then having another cup of coffee. “That was it,” he says. Kip Moore stayed put.
In time, he realized how good that change felt. His calendar is still full—tour dates are clogging up most of his 2025 already—but he’s learned to protect the little pockets between sprints. He logs back on when he needs to. Like now. Moore and I are on the phone because on February 28 he’ll release his sprawling sixth album, Solitary Tracks. Restless and rowdy, and at times just pure rock ’n’ roll fun, the set is a direct result of a few transformative years. New home base, new record label, new mindset.
In late 2022, after almost twenty years of calling Nashville home, the south-Georgia native relocated to South Carolina. Music City was suddenly feeling crowded; the neon glow of downtown was getting to be too much and all the new apartment complexes were clogging up his sky. He started to look for land along the marsh. A little place to fish. Somewhere “I could walk around in my damn underwear in the backyard.”
He spent more time writing alone and, in 2024, parted ways with MCA Nashville, the label where he’d spent the entirety of his career. He was already at work on Solitary Tracks at the time, and with the deadline to renew looming, he decided to finish it on his own. “I got to a place where you feel like there isn’t a heavy importance put on you but you’re still providing a lot for a place,” he says. “You want someone to be excited about what you’re doing, and put a little oomph in you.”
He kept writing and kept recording and, with the record largely complete, signed a new deal with Virgin Music Group.
Moore’s lyric sheets, especially on recent releases, have often favored characters and personas. But here, on aides A and B, he turns his gaze inward, wrestling with regret and making peace with things that haven’t gone his way. Occasionally he even takes himself to task. “It was just time,” he says of the pivot. As quickly as those songs came on, they left. “The minute it was done, I was no longer in that headspace,” he recalls. He felt free and ready to keep writing. “I didn’t have a direction, really,” he admits.
For sides C and D, he and his collaborators (Moore coproduced the set with Jaren Johnson; additional production came via Oscar Charles and Jay Joyce) let loose, folding funk, soul, and even a little barroom piano into Moore’s otherwise straight-up southern rock. At one point, he abandoned his process completely, singing live with the band to tape—out of the vocal booth, right in with the drums. It’s daring, and it works. Solitary Tracks doesn’t just crackle; it cooks.
In a wide-ranging and candid conversation, Moore opens up about music, faith, dark times, and divine intervention. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
ESQUIRE: Do you have community on Maui?
KIP MOORE: I’ve really fallen in love with the people on this island in particular. I feel like I’m surrounded by people who understand the way I see things. If you see someone in Nashville, it’s usually a quick conversation; they spend the whole time looking around, like, “Oh, I got a thing…” Here you’ll walk out to a surf break and you’ll meet someone that you’ve never met—you’re both just out searching for waves—and before you know it, you’ve been having a cup of coffee and speaking for hours.
You’ve mentioned feeling like you’re just a little different a lot over the years, mainly in interviews but also explicitly on this record on “Straight Line Boots.” When did you first feel that?
You know, at sixteen—my dad would tease me—I would sometimes purposely miss the dinner and movie with my friends. I would say, “Ah, you know, I’m going to practice basketball a little bit longer,” or whatever. And I would do it just so I could go eat later by myself and catch the nine o’clock showing. That just carried over into college. I’ve always just felt a little bit on the fringe.
It doesn’t seem like this is from a place of insecurity. More just introversion.
A lot of it is that as I’m trying to explain something to someone, I can tell that they’re not really grasping what I’m saying. Like, I just watched this movie called The Lost Child. It’s a really cheaply made film, but it blew me away. There were parts where I was just weeping. If you look at the comments, everyone’s just blasting it—“This is boring,” “I kept fast-forwarding.” Reading them, I was like, This is why I feel like a fucking weirdo. I don’t feel like my heart operates the same.
Have there been phases of your life where feeling different has given you anxiety?
I go back and forth. I definitely feel unsettled at times. I feel everything really big, whether it’s big or small.
Where are you now with it?
I’ve become more comfortable with it. I’ve felt tormented at times, and I do still feel a little nuts. But I do think it helps me do what I do. If I wasn’t like this, maybe I wouldn’t be able to write a song.
I’m sure when you’re creating, it’s incredible to feel that switched on. And I’m sure the times in between are much harder.
When I was younger, I would see people like Kurt Cobain and be like, How could they? But it all makes sense to me now how those things happen. It can get intense. Luckily, I’ve never mixed those feelings with hard drugs. But I can get really dark sometimes.
What pulls you out?
I have always been a spiritual person, and I have always had a faith about me. There have been times in my life where I’ve had to be really diligent and I’ve taken the time to wake up every morning, read a little bit of scripture, and meditate. That centers me in a different way. And it’s wild that I know that, and there are times where I will still not do that.
When you’re in it, it’s hard to make logical choices.
When it’s right there, teetering on the edge, that always seems to bring me back. But I’ve learned not to do any coping mechanisms that make me spiral even worse.
Do you have people in your life who come knocking during those times?
For sure. [Songwriter] Dan Couch has been such a blessing in my life. I can’t say enough about him as a human. And Manny [Medina, his bass player]. Sometimes he can just see it and he’ll check on me.
I do want to talk about the record. Twenty-three songs; sides A and B are super heavy. It all rocks, and it’s fun to listen to, but it’s very restless.
It was a cathartic thing. It was me opening up that closet, looking at it, and going through the wreckage and the baggage and giving myself some grace—asking for forgiveness. And then closing the door and walking away. The record was supposed to be done after A and B, but we got finished and still had four months until deadline. Sides C and D became this eclectic hodgepodge. I wanted to give the fans a whole different side—a little bit of randomness—of what I was doing during that time.
Were you in a particularly reflective state at the time and so it came out in the music? Or did the music draw it out?
I think I was going through something. I was a little pissed off, to be honest. I knew the money that I had netted; I knew what I had done. And you know as well as I do that there are a lot of artists on labels that aren’t making anything for the labels. They’re in the red. And I felt like all those houses were still getting new paint jobs, and my house was just rocking through all these storms. That was when I wrote “High Hopes.”
I don’t know that I’ve heard you admit so plainly to regret on a record before, certainly not like you do on “Livin’ Side.”
I wrote that at about two o’clock in the morning, sitting at my kitchen table. I was evaluating a lot of things. And I was dragging around these dead weights behind me that were these regrets, these things that I was ashamed of, these things that I needed to give myself grace for—these things that I was mad about with other people. I felt like, I’m just sick of this shit. After that and then “Bad Spot” I felt like I knew what the record was.
It seems like there were two parallel transformations happening: While you were shedding some of these harder emotions, your writing also shed a lot of its reliance on character-driven songs. A lot of these songs are very firmly about you.
It wasn’t an intentional plan. It was just seeing the situation for what it was. You know, when you’re cooking at radio—people put so much stock in that. And then when you’re not, even though you’re still selling all these tickets and being really successful on the road, the phone lines drop a little bit. You’re calling people you thought you were friends with and people that used to always pick up, now all of a sudden they’re not. That really brought all that stuff out of me.
That’s all outward force, what you’re talking about, but what I’m hearing on the album, like on “Learning As I Go,” is also very inward. A lot of these lyrics are about you wanting to evolve, recognizing that there are parts of your personality that maybe you don’t like all that much.
A lot of this shit’s my own doing. There are things about myself that I regret. I want to be a better friend to people. I want to be a better companion to people. That’s what I’ve been working on, and how some things are not negotiable for me anymore. It was a heavy mirror on myself and not being afraid to give myself a tongue-lashing.
STREAM SOLITARY TRACKS IN FULL
Your explosion overseas—UK, Australia, and South Africa—has been pretty stunning. How much credit do you give to that when it comes to how musically adventurous the second half of this record is? The guardrails feel off to me.
I realized if I trust my gut there will be a place for it. It might not be as big of a place as the one before, but there’ll be a place for it.
To see a song like “Heart’s Desire,” which released here in 2012 and didn’t really do much in terms of radio, sort of out of nowhere scale the charts in South Africa—how closely were you watching that?
It’s really all from one guy that was playing my stuff on rock and pop radio. He was the spark. But the first time I got invited to go over there and play, I turned it down. I just didn’t quite believe it. Eventually, it was taking that gamble of trusting this guy that said there was a monster fan base waiting for me.
Turns out…
Just insanity. The second time I went back, I played Cape Town football stadium and Pretoria football stadium—and I’ll go again. Hopefully in 2026.
I’ll be honest, it felt like divine intervention to me. Like, this guy randomly finding my Wild Ones record, a record that I believed in so much … it feels like a very God thing, for me.
Something I think about a lot is that we are very much in the era of the oversharing pop star. We know about their breakups and their nighttime skin routines and how they spend so much of their waking hours. You’ve never been that guy.
I don’t know how to say this without just saying it: I get a little turned off by everybody’s oversharing. So that makes me even more insular. But the main thing is, I don’t feel any need to do that. I don’t know why anyone needs to know about my personal life. It just feels really odd.
When it’s working so well for so many, do you ever question that decision?
The weight I feel for the people who rely on me, I probably deal with that stuff a little too heavily. Luckily, I have a group of people around me—especially my band and crew—who are happy that I’m not following the trend. Now, that does help to hear that, but it still doesn’t change the fact that if I do those things, maybe it elevates the career and they get paid more. But my gut has steered me pretty good, and I have to trust that. I have to live in that.
What I’ve Learned: Robbie Williams
Brooks & Dunn’s Next Act Is the Stuff of Legend
What I’ve Learned: Perry Farrell
90 Minutes with Shaboozey
DIIV Brings Shoegaze for the Revolution
Kings of Leon’s Caleb Followill Is Different Now
What I’ve Learned: Sheryl Crow
Scott Stapp Is Ready to Go Higher
The Black Crowes Are Ready to Fly Again
What I’ve Learned: Billie Joe Armstrong
Lenny Kravitz Wants To Clear a Few Things Up
Justin Hawkins Believes In a Thing Called Rock
A Part of Hearst Digital Media
We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back.
©2025 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
What to Read Next
music profiles
Ranked! The Top 10 Best Songs on Kip Moore’s new album ‘Solitary Tracks’
Kip Moore’s new album, ‘Solitary Tracks’ is out today – February 28th. At 23 tracks it is an intense and rewarding listen. You can read our review of the album and our thoughts on this project right here. However, we thought we’d also rank what we thought were the best 10 songs in case you wanted to start there and work backwards, just in case 23 tracks is just too much to cope with on first listen!
With ‘Solitary Tracks,’ Moore enters new territory both sonically and lyrically. Co-produced with Jaren Johnston, Oscar Charles, and Jay Joyce, the album is a deeply personal exploration of solitude and transformation, split into two distinct halves—one acknowledging isolation and the other embracing change. This project sees Moore stripping back to his roots while pushing his artistry forward, embracing a more introspective yet bold approach.
Here are our favourite 10 tracks:
A funky, bluesy track reminiscent of Moore’s third album ‘Slowheart’ vibes. There are nice southern guitar riffs and a groovy, swampy solo here too. One of his biographical, unapologetic ‘this is me, take me as I am’ songs that really works well within the narrative of this particular album without overwhelming it.
Here we are getting debut album, ‘Hey Pretty Girl’ vibes as Moore declares ‘I’ll be your sex on fire’ to the object of his affection. It’s an atmospheric, slow burn of a song with one of those patented Kip Moore repeating guitar lines and his arena-sized vocals building a huge chorus out of seemingly nothing.
Another quiet, intense song. ‘A cat’s only got 9 lives, hell I burned through 7,’ Moore declares finally laying his demons and the things that haunt his past to rest. ‘Livin Side’ is another song about living well, finding out who you are and not being constrained by the sins of your past. Steady drums, Moore’s husky vocals and a kind of Eric Church-esque vibe drive this song. There’s a niggly, infectious melody here and a kind of quiet confidence that so many of the songs on this album have.
A quiet, restrained album opener finds Moore isolated, at odds with himself and the rest of the world. However the drums soon kick and we hear him declare that he has ‘High Hopes’ as the pace accelerates in a clever, anthemic way. ‘I’ve got one good hand but it’s barely hanging on the ropes,’ he declares, setting the tone for the rest of the album: With Moore battered and bruised but certainly not beaten.
This banger opens with the classic Kip Moore tasteful, restrained guitar sound similar to many of the songs on his iconic ‘Up All Night’ debut album. Here we find him out in the backwoods of Kentucky, fishing, drinking Coors light and just chilling. ‘When it all goes left, take a hard right turn, I pray the fish still bite and the world don’t burn,’ he sings. He’s looking for the same peace and contentment we all are: It’s hard to find that these days but Moore plays his part in this chilled out, powerful pean to going your own way and being yourself, another strong theme running through the whole album.
Another quiet, intense, stripped back song that feels like it was recorded in one take live. Think Springsteen’s ‘Atlantic City’ for a sparse, haunting touchstone as Moore dispels the notion that things last forever – ‘winter came fast and your hand got cold’ he declares, mired in misery and ruminating on the transitory nature of life, love and everything around us.
The album closer provides us with all manner of chugging guitars and U2-meets-Simple Minds-esque drama as Moore asks ‘where did everybody go? How’d I wind up here alone?’ There’s a nice reference to Springsteen’s ‘Radio Nowhere’ as Moore searches for a connection to anyobdy in this chaotic and social media-driven world. The song mirrors the modern disconnect in our society and people’s dislocation from each other in a powerful, yet insanely melodic way.
This title track and statement song has acoustic beginnings channeling that classic 80s Springsteen sound as Moore follows that theme of being ‘forever on the outside, always looking in.’ It’s an anthem for people on the fringe, outsiders and people following their own paths in life. Part Eric Church, part Springsteen, the chorus explodes in a wave of anthemic melody whilst the verses remain restrained, built around a steady drum beat, Moore’s trademark repeating guitar patterns and atmospheric production.
Here we revel in a big rock anthem with an 80s production edge to it. This one is for the fans of ‘Midnight Slow Dance.’ Think Bryan Adams or Eddie Money jamming together using the classic U2 “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ guitar line. Big drums, big chorus and a future live classic, nailed on. If he doesn’t play this song on his UK tour in May we WILL riot!
Moore veers into classic 80s Springsteen here on this uptempo declaration of love and loyalty. The song builds on a steady bed of drums and guitars to reach its melodic chorus that will delight fans of Springsteen’s vastly underrated ‘Tunnel of Love’ album. It’s a restrained, melodic delight that’s both a promise and a pledge. ‘I’m man enough and I’ve got all the right stuff,’ he declares in true 1980s MTV – Breakfast Club – FM radio fashion. What a time machine of a song and perfectly placed on an intense and often introspective album to provide just the right amount of machismo.
Kip Moore’s ‘Solitary Tracks’ album is out today – February 28th. You can download it in all the usual places, buy vinyl from Amazon and read our review of the full project here.
Choose which of our mailing lists you want to subscribe to. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Choose which of our mailing lists you’d like to subscribe to. You can unsubscribe at any time.
10. Alley Cat
9. Wildfire
8. Livin Side
7. High Hopes
6. Burn
5. Forever is A Lie
4. Only Me
3. Solitary Tracks
2. Love and War
1.Tough Enough
AROUND THE WEB
Review: ‘Solitary Tracks’ by Kip Moore finds him bruised but defiant on his most diverse album yet
Kip Moore unveils new song ‘Around You’ ahead of expansive album
Billy Currington & Kip Moore team up for 2025 US tour
Kip Moore announces expansive new album ‘Solitary Tracks’
Niko Moon announces ‘Good Time Charleston’ event for Mental Health Awareness Month
Skunk Anansie to release new album ‘The Painful Truth’ in May
EF newsletter sign-up
Find Useful Knowledge
Tired of Cleaning out Your Gutters? Get a Quote Today!
How Much Money Should You Have Before Hiring a Financial Advisor?
Look for Any High School Yearbook, It’s Free!
Should You Buy an Electric Car?
We’ve Got Your Eyes Covered – Find Your Perfect Pair!
Take on a Challenge: Make Pasta Al Limone at Home
Test Your Hearing From The Comfort of Your Home
Stop Paying Too Much for Your Prescriptions – Compare Prices Today
RELATED ARTICLES
EF newsletter sign-up
MUST READ
|
|
|
|
|
Country star Kip Moore’s ‘Solitary Tracks’ dives into maturity, growing worldwide stardom
Kip Moore is a country star two decades removed from his college career at South Central Georgia’s Valdosta State University. However, the 44-year-old Tifton, Georgia native has kept that spirit alive with a competitive athlete’s passion and a tortured poet’s soul.
His latest album, “Solitary Tracks,” arrives on Feb. 28, and it comes as Moore’s career has been established on an international stage. He’s the only mainstream artist who spent time touring and visiting five different continents in the past few years, and he was awarded the 2024 International Artist Achievement Award at the 58th Annual CMA Awards for bringing country music around the globe.
In the second decade of his Nashville-based career, Moore is focused on independence and meeting self-defined expectations.
Only a fraction of the many songs Moore wrote while touring and traveling globally ended up on “Solitary Tracks.”
Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.
What began for Moore as a very “specific” creative and sonic journey eventually “went off into (creative) oblivion” and ended with him becoming an independent artist, partnered with Virgin Music Group.
On a cool winter Monday morning in Nashville, Moore was at the beach in Maui, preparing for a day of songwriting and surfing, when he took a reporter’s call to talk about the new album.
Moore’s the kind of artist who fills quiet pauses in interviews with anecdotes about nights at local Hawaiian bars enjoying cocktails and laughs with his neighbors, breaking bread with families in rural Mexico and building safe houses and soup kitchens in South Africa.
“Being a songwriter while being honest with the man in the mirror (requires) getting past feeling like you’re exhausted from medicating however you can to compartmentalize and push down anger and emotional demons while trying to hang on,” Moore said, describing the process behind writing his album’s reflective, guitar-driven rocker, ‘Livin’ Side.’
“When you can navigate the baggage and wreckage left behind, the songs come from the faith and grace that remains after the darkness of disappointing the deepest part of your character.”
The lyrics of “Livin’ Side” highlight the contemplation of his outlaw existence, which involves “breaking rules, breaking glass, and breaking hearts” while enduring what he perceives to be the seventh of his nine lives.
“This album represents me kicking out the (metaphorical) floodlights,” said Moore, referencing a moment when Johnny Cash, while drunk and aggressive, infamously smashed the Ryman Auditorium’s stage floodlights during an October 1965 appearance.
Moore’s creative process involved songs being “pushed out of him” in bursts of inspiration over days or weeks.
It reflects a creative cycle that, as Moore has now been a mainstream country recording artist for a dozen years, reflects how deeply dialed in he is to releasing tracks that reflect honesty and maturity.
The same artist whose renown grew from songs like “Somethin’ Bout A Truck” and “Beer Money” is not the same guy performing new material like “Live Here to Work,” “Learning as I Go” and “Flowers in December.”
“The guy who moved to Nashville and sang songs about characters living a fun, simple life in my nostalgic experiences has now lived a hard and fast life filled with experiencing heartache, seeing the world and paying attention to all of it — and now I have something to say (in response),” Moore said.
“I’ve grown from living for drinking a case of beer over the weekend with my friends to living in a garage apartment in Nashville. Now, I’m opening my heart, mind and spirit to pour into my fans as people,” he said, citing the global philanthropic work of his three-year-old One Heartbeat fund, aimed at solving “housing and other economic challenges faced by some families in the wake of rising costs and decreasing affordability.”
“I’m not in Nashville as much anymore because I can’t find any places to put my feet in the dirt there,” said Moore, making a more significant point about how Music City’s hyper-urban development impacts those who remember much less developed times in country music’s industrial hub.
“Because we’ve reached a place where that creative well is completely dry, I’m no longer interested in using the same guitar tones and lyrics to say the same things as everyone else,” Moore said. “Yes, it works so well, but even when we’re successful as artists, we shouldn’t be afraid of not being comfortable.”
“Discomfort” will find Moore on the road in 2025 as much as he was on it in 2024, when he toured solo plus supported acts, including Billy Currington and Hardy. As well, 2025 kicked off with him performing at Pretoria, South Africa’s Loftus Stadium in front of 23,000 fans and headlining at South Africa’s Cape Town Country Festival with Zac Brown Band, Darius Rucker, Brothers Osborne and more, in front of a crowd of 25,000.
“I’m an introspective person who is always trying to process who I am in relation to all the other humans in the world,” he said. He finally launches into a longer comment punctuated by a statement that also serves as his creative ethos as he pilots his career in 2025 and beyond.
“I’m not as driven by what the world perceives as the precious value of success. My soul gets charged up by creating human connections (defined by) taking care of people and creating great experiences for them.”
