For Tucker Wetmore, Singing About Whiskey Is So Serious

After Tucker Wetmore wrote and recorded the songs for his debut LP, What Not To, he invested considerable effort in an often-overlooked aspect of album artistry: the track list. “I spent so many weeks just trying to get that right,” the 25-year-old from Kalama, Washington, says. “I think it ended up if not perfect, pretty damn close.”

The country star sees his carefully curated 19-song collection, which was released on April 25, as a “murder mystery scene” that even he’s discovering new clues in. “I still find things that I didn’t intentionally do, but they’re happening,” he says. “I feel like I’ve created a puzzle, shook it up, and said ‘Here you go.’”

The puzzle pieces he’s referring to are the album’s various interconnected themes, which include roller coaster relationships, gambling, bad habits, and, perhaps most prevalent of all, Wetmore’s favorite alcoholic beverage. “I love me some whiskey,” Wetmore says. The drink is mentioned in more than half of the songs, often as a totem symbolic of the other elements he’s exploring. “It’s gotten me into some fun times, it’s gotten me into some trouble, it’s got me through some things, and it’s gotten me out of some things,” Wetmore says. “It’s just so true to me, so I really wanted a whiskey theme for the album.”

There’s a lot of people reaching out saying, “Hey, I could be your brunette.”

As we chat, Wetmore tilts his Zoom camera to show off a shelf overflowing with whiskey in his kitchen, a grin emerging beneath his trucker hat. It’s this mischievousness that has helped make Wetmore such an instant star. He just set off on a yearlong North American tour with Thomas Rhett, which recently included his Stagecoach debut on the same day his album dropped. He’s also racked up best new artist nominations at the ACM Awards and iHeartRadio Music Awards in recent months. But at this point, he’s content to just show off his whiskey collection.

Two particularly important whiskey lyrics also serve as instances of what Wetmore refers to as What Not To’s many hidden “Easter eggs.” The very first words of the album’s opening track are: “She said, ‘Why? Why do you love that whiskey, when all it does is get you in trouble?’” At the end of the record, Wetmore mournfully returns to the bottle, with the final chorus of “Whiskey Again” finding the singer “drinking whiskey again” after a miserable breakup.

“Originally, I had ‘Goodbye Whiskey’ as the outro,” Wetmore says, mentioning the ballad that ended up in the middle of the album. “But as I was doing the track list, I was drinking a glass of whiskey, and I was like, ‘That’s not true to me. I’m not done with whiskey. I’m drinking it now!’ So ‘Whiskey Again’ was the perfect last song.”

Wetmore is proud of that lyrical bookend, but the track he calls out as the biggest Easter egg song on the record is “Takes One to Break One.” “On that song, I’m talking about ‘Casino’ and ‘Brunette’ with the ‘I’m about to roll the dice on a brunette’ line, and the chorus is literally spelling out ‘Bad Habit,’” Wetmore says, pointing out how the lyrics reference other songs on What Not To. “And there’s the drinking and relationships connection. The whole thing is an Easter egg of the album’s themes, and to fit it all on one song is pretty crazy.”

While most of What Not To’s songs flow within these overarching themes, its title track stands out pretty starkly. On “What Not To,” Wetmore opens up about wanting to someday be the devoted father that he never had. He has no relationship with his dad, who divorced his mom and left the family when Wetmore was 10. “I don’t really know what he’s doing,” he says.

Wetmore threw himself into sports after that, until an injury ended his football career at Montana Technological University. “God works in mysterious ways, man,” Wetmore says. “He broke my leg to lead me to country music. I’m so glad he did.”

There’s a difference between a trend and a way of living. Country, to me, it’s my way of living.

Though he always wanted “What Not To” on the record, he had a “mental battle” with making it so prominent. “I didn’t want it to be the title of the album,” Wetmore says. “My team was really pushing hard on it, but I was skeptical. I was already scared to put it out in the world, but I’m glad I did it.”

Despite the difficult subject matter, Wetmore’s mom loves the track. “When I showed her that song, she was crying. And then I was tearing up,” Wetmore says. “She knows it means a lot to me, and how I use music as my therapy.”

It’s another track that’s been capturing every other woman’s attention. The latest single “Brunette” sees Wetmore confessing that despite his past attraction to blonds, he’s now looking for a brown-haired woman. As you might imagine, his DMs have exploded. “There’s a lot of people reaching out saying, ‘Hey, I could be your brunette,’” he says.

“I’m actually really surprised that song has caught on so much,” Wetmore says. “It’s a different sound than anything I’ve done. It's more western-y, and it’s talking about a topic that could get cheesy really quick, but it doesn’t, thank God.”

Genre is something Wetmore has been thinking about a lot recently, especially given how traditionally pop artists like Beyoncé, Post Malone, and Lana Del Rey have made big moves into country. “There’s a difference between a trend and a way of living. Country, to me, it’s my way of living,” Wetmore says. “But it’s cool to see people interested in the genre and lifestyle. And I respect it.”

Now that he’s on his longest tour yet and has enjoyed some of his biggest viral success, he can appreciate major artists breaking down genre walls, but for Wetmore himself, he’s sticking to what he knows — whether you want to call it country or not.

“I’m not going to make something just for the sake of making it something else,” he says. “I’m going to create the stuff that I like, the stuff I think sounds good, the stuff that makes me feel something. I’ll leave it up to somebody else to put a label on it. Music is music. It has one sole purpose: to make you feel something, and that’s what I believe in.”