![]() ![]() “There are so many times I’ve sung that song and wanted to cry,” he says. It’s still tender for him-not just heartbreak, but how alone he was going through it. One song he wrote about that relationship, called “21 Summer,” has become a fan favorite, and you can see why: It’s a big, nostalgic singalong with lyrics about cutoff jeans and hair blowing in the breeze. He channeled that anguish into his music. “I was mad that no one knew why I was hurting,” he says. “It made me resent people.” A first heartbreak in his early twenties crushed him all the more because he felt like he couldn’t tell anyone. ![]() and his siblings-including sister Natalie, who now works for a publisher in Nashville-were always musical, performing alongside Big John’s blues band in local shows. is short for Thomas John, the inverse of his older brother and bandmate, whose name is John Thomas, named after their father, whose name is also John Thomas, though people call him “Big John.” Growing up in Deale, Md., a blue-collar town on the Chesapeake Bay, T.J. “But is that just because they’ve never had the opportunity to relate to it?” says, country isn’t the most popular genre among gay people. Country music is about storytelling, and that means T.J.’s identity is inextricable from his music. “But in a rural town playing a county fair? I’m curious how this will go.” The professional risks he’s taking in coming out feel worth it, both for his own happiness and because, well, it’s time. “I don’t think I’m going to get run off the stage in Chicago,” he says. Taylor Swift even cited the band’s ouster as a reason she remained publicly apolitical for so long: “You’re always one comment away from being done,” she told Variety in a 2020 interview. The tale of the Chicks, formerly the Dixie Chicks, who were exiled after criticizing the Iraq War, looms large over country music. The country music business is lucrative, generating $5.5 billion to Nashville’s economy alone, according to RIAA if artists speak out, they run the risk of alienating listeners, particularly in an era when even anodyne statements of support for a cause can be misconstrued. If liberal Hollywood is notorious for pushing a progressive agenda, country has historically been its counterpoint-a safe haven for traditional “family values.” Never mind that many country artists, like Nashville as a city, lean blue: They know that their primary market, like the state of Tennessee itself, skews red. That feels so strange.”īut his reservations are understandable, given that country music remains a bastion of mainstream conservatism in American arts and culture. “I find myself being guarded for not wanting to talk about something that I personally don’t have a problem with. “I’m very comfortable being gay,” he says later, in a quiet room at the office of his management company. In some respects, he says, coming out publicly is no big deal. This isn’t a recent revelation for him he’s known since he was young, and he’s been out to family and friends in his tight-knit Nashville community for years. What may come as a surprise to the band’s fans is the news that T.J., 36, is gay. and John are engaging performers with a knack for anthemic hooks. There’s nothing surprising about the duo’s popularity: Both T.J. (Have you ever fallen in love in late summer, gazing out at an orange-and-purple sunset from the bed of a pickup truck? Well, me neither, but this song will make you feel like you have!) The duo has won four CMA Awards, been nominated for seven Grammys, and collaborated with heavy-hitting country contemporaries such as Dierks Bentley and Maren Morris. Since signing to EMI Records Nashville, they’ve released seven country Top 40 singles and three studio albums, including their swoony, rollicking platinum hit “Stay a Little Longer,” which crossed over to mainstream radio. He’s the lead vocalist of Brothers Osborne, the duo he formed with his brother John, a guitarist, in 2012 together they make roots-inflected, soulful country-rock that sounds just as good on the radio as it would filling an arena. ![]() is tall and friendly, with a twangy, sonorous voice that often crests into deep, warm laughter. “I’m ready to put this behind me,” he says. ![]() Now, at a masked-up photo shoot in east Nashville, he insists that he’s feeling good as he slips on a jacket. Osborne how he’s feeling, which makes sense, given the thing he’s about to do, but it’s making him uneasy, hearing that well-intentioned question over and over again from so many people-his friends, his family, his team, and even me, over the course of the days that have led up to this one. ![]()
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