“The Boot” recently posted a list<\/a> of country stars who were totally underrated at first…<\/p>\n1. Luke Combs. Nobody would sign him, and “The Voice” even rejected him because he, quote, “wasn’t interesting enough.” He never made it on the show.<\/p>\n
2. Jelly Roll. No one in country sounded like him or looked like him.<\/p>\n
3. Walker Hayes. He moved to Nashville in 2005 and toiled away for a decade before making it big.<\/p>\n
4. Chris Stapleton. He was known in the industry as a great songwriter. But it was another 15 years before he really went mainstream.<\/p>\n
7. Gabby Barrett. She finished third on season 16 of “American Idol”, but might be the most successful third-place finisher ever.<\/p>\n
9. Kane Brown. He got famous for posting covers on Facebook, and nobody took him seriously. His first two singles flopped, but then he had five straight #1 hits.<\/p>\n
10. Billy Ray Cyrus. “Achy Breaky Heart” was huge when it came out in 1990 but got slammed by critics. So people thought he was a one-hit wonder. But he’s still relevant 33 years later. He helped Lil Nas X break out with “Old Town Road” in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everyone loves an underdog, and country music is full of them.","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":23645,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"featured_img_display":"Yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[942,268,1616,3995,204,5051,78,5052,1713],"class_list":["post-26685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-country-music-news","tag-billy-ray-cyrus","tag-chris-stapleton","tag-gabby-barrett","tag-jelly-roll","tag-kane-brown","tag-kelly-roll","tag-luke-combs","tag-underdog","tag-walker-hayes"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 12:16:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"react_link":"https:\/\/country959.com\/blogs\/country-music-news\/2023\/10\/country-stars-who-were-underdogs\/","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cjwffm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cjwffm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cjwffm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cjwffm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cjwffm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cjwffm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cjwffm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cjwffm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cjwffm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/cjwffm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}