Chase Rice

Chase Rice parlayed his slot on Survivor: Nicaragua in 2010 into a successful career in country music. Rice first crossed the country radar as a songwriter, co-writing Florida Georgia Line’s 2012 smash “Cruise.” In the wake of “Cruise,” Rice embarked on a career as a performer, singing an anthemic variation of the bro-country of Florida Georgia Line. “Ready Set Roll” and “Gonna Wanna Tonight” give him Top Ten hits in the mid-2010s, while “Eyes on You” became his first Country Airplay number one in 2018; it was later followed to that position by the Florida Georgia Line duet “Drinkin’ Beer. Talkin’ God. Amen.” In 2020. Rice started to move away from bro country and head toward quieter territory on I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go to Hell, an album released in 2023.
North Carolina-raised country singer and songwriter Chase Rice grew up listening to Garth Brooks and other singers who reshuffled and updated country music into something more in line with pop in the ’90s. During high school and college, however, Rice put most of his time and energy into sports, playing linebacker on the University of North Carolina football team. An injury eventually sidelined his football career, and it was then that he finally picked up a guitar in earnest and began writing songs. After graduating from college, Rice took a job as part of the NASCAR Hendrick Motorsports pit crew, playing out in the bars of Charlotte in the evenings whenever he could, and flying to Nashville on the weekends to take part in songwriter nights.
Rice first came into the public’s eye in 2010, when he was a contestant on the TV show Survivor: Nicaragua; he eventually finished second. He released a six-song EP, Country as Me, in 2011, following it with the full-length Dirt Road Communion a year later. They performed well on the charts, but it was a writing opportunity, “Cruise,” by Florida Georgia Line, that really propelled his career forward; initially released in mid-2012, it spent over a year in heavy rotation, topping the country charts for many weeks and reaching number four on the overall chart.
Rice signed to Columbia Nashville and released his major-label debut, Ignite the Night, in August 2014; it debuted at number one on the country charts, and sent one single, “Ready Set Roll,” into the country chart’s Top Five. Another country Top Ten, “Gonna Wanna Tonight,” followed in 2014 and Rice spent the next year recording a new album. “Whisper,” the first song from these sessions, appeared in early 2016. After a number of delays, including a switch from Columbia to Broken Bow Records, Rice’s fourth LP, Lambs & Lions, saw release in November 2017. It debuted at number six on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart and included the multi-platinum number one single “Eyes on You.” A deluxe edition of Lambs & Lions arrived in 2019. That same year, Rice appeared as a guest on the reality show The Bachelor, playing a private concert for bachelor Peter Weber and his date, Victoria Fuller, whom Rice had previously dated. The drama-laden episode aired in January 2020, just as the singer released his next project, The Album, Pt. 1. The Album, Pt. 2 appeared later that year, followed by the chart-topping Florida Georgia Line collaboration “Drinkin’ Beer. Talkin’ God. Amen.” and the platinum-certified “Lonely If You Are.”
Rice’s output slowed over the next two years as he prepared his next full-length album. “If I Were Rock & Roll” appeared in 2021, followed in early 2023 by “Way Down Yonder.” Both songs were included on his sixth album, I Hate Cowboys & All Dogs Go to Hell, a record produced by Oscar Charles and cut at Rice’s farm. A step away from the poppy bro country of his early years, the album found Rice in a reflective mood. ~ Steve Leggett