Darius Rucker gets honest on new album 'Carolyn's Boy,' comfortable with country success

In almost 40 years as a country, pop and rock performer, Darius Rucker has topped global singles charts a dozen times while having one of the top 10 best-selling pop albums of all time (Hootie and the Blowfish's "Cracked Rear View") and singing one of the top five best-selling singles in country music history (a cover version of Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel").

However, Rucker, 57, still feels so creatively unfulfilled by a career that's yielded multiple levels of unprecedented success that he co-wrote with Ed Sheeran for his new album "Carolyn's Boy."

It yielded a song, "Sara," about how much he loved his fifth-grade girlfriend.

Yes, for his new album, the "Come Back Song" vocalist had a therapy session about childhood romance with an artist almost half his age who has sold 150 million records worldwide.

"I'm always motivated to work because I've got greater goals to reach," says Rucker while seated in a conference room at Nashville's Hilton Hotel before his induction into the Music City Walk of Fame.

"If I'm not thinking about working hard — from charity work to recording and touring — then I don't feel justified in [my acclaim]."

A strange argument exists that places his work on a short list of some of the most era-defining art of the last quarter century, but also directly behind Blues Traveler, Kenny Chesney, Florida Georgia Line and Alanis Morrissette.

However, because the first half of his pop career occurred during the greatest-selling and most visible multimedia era of popular music, it's possible for Rucker to feel both ubiquitous yet somehow humbly unsuccessful.

"Carolyn's Boy" is his seventh country release and finds him having worked nearly twice as long in the genre as he did as a pop and rock artist. The album finds his self-awareness from his Hootie and the Blowfish mainstream renown finally matched by his mastery of country music's three chords and the truth.

"I'm still listening and learning from the HARDYs, Ashley Gorleys and John Osbornes of the world, though," says Rucker.

A decade earlier, subbing in names like Lady A's Charles Kelley, Old Crow Medicine Show's Ketch Secor and Chris Stapleton to that mix was possible.

The arc and intersections involved in Rucker's development are astonishing. But as expected, they're met with his trademark understated nature.

"From not knowing how I would adapt to the craft [of being a country music performer] to now being seen by the world as an elder statesman of country music is pretty cool," Rucker adds.

"Beers and Sunshine" was Rucker's COVID-19 quarantine era 10th No. 1 country hit. It's joined on the album by previously released material like "Same Beer, Different Problem" and "In This Together," which are both tracks that, as Rucker noted in a June 2022 Tennessean feature, highlight his belief that as a divided country, "sitting down and talking about the things that unify us" can "start the path of learning how we can all get along again."

However, the album's meat involves Rucker finally getting to the core of country's stereotypical three chords and the truth.

"I had a lot of therapy with myself on this record, which allows me to show the world how much I view making music, internally, as a therapeutic outlet for saying what I feel and think," he says.

Alongside John Osborne of the Brothers Osborne and Lee Thomas Miller, he crafted "Never Been Over," about the "ups and downs" of relationships — an allusion to his 2020 "conscious uncoupling" from Beth Leonard, his wife of 20 years.

"We've never been splitting up friends, splitting up records, putting up walls and burning down letters," he sings.

"I still can't believe I sang that one. But it's always a better song when it's real to the artist," Rucker says to The Tennessean.

Similarly, "Fires Don't Start Themselves" could be one of the best ballads of his career — including with Hootie and the Blowfish.

There's an arc that starts with Rucker as a childhood fan of Al Green and Charley Pride, with a collegiate appreciation of The Black Crowes that synergizes into a pop-blues run of hits and a country music career that's also seen Rucker develop chops as one of the most consistent American Songbook-inspired pop vocalists in the modern era.

For "Fires Don't Start Themselves," he's blended his life of influences into a finesse-laden soul anthem. It features just enough rootsy country composition and instrumentation to take the edge off its Al Green and Charley Pride stylings. It's the type of romantic seducer with endless mainstream appeal.

His inclusion of Poplarville, Mississippi-born vocal trio Chapel Hart on "Church Hymn" sees him embracing the incredible spread of African-American art pushing for sustainable visibility in country music.

Highlighting the constantly NBC-featured and Grand Ole Opry-appearing indie group shows Rucker favoring what he describes as a "great, 'new to me' band" that he started following on YouTube.

"They're stretching out and doing the hard work," Rucker continues. "Funnily, I thought I'd help them by giving them a break. But they're the type of group where they take things to a higher level when you give them a break."

Rucker views his seventh album as his best comprehensive country music work.

"For 'Carolyn's Boy,' I talked to some of the best songwriters in town about so many of my authentically lived experiences — that's the point, right?" he says. "I feel like I'm finally comfortable doing what I'm supposed to do as a country music artist."

Dig deeper with Rucker and the album's title honoring his mother, Carolyn (who passed in 1992), is profound.

He notes that he's tried to honor her before, on 2015's "So I Sang," which, because Tim James originally wrote it in honor of his father's passing and rewrote it to honor the relationship Rucker had with his mother, didn't exactly hit the mark.

"Before any of this reached anything, I was a poor kid from South Carolina whose mother found it amazing that all these white people were yelling and screaming when I sang songs they liked," Rucker jokes.

He recalls her mother being fond of hard rock and that her sister, who lived around the corner from their home, was a fan of country artists, including Willie Nelson's 1975 album "Red Headed Stranger."

"From that point to my death bed, I'll be trying to make music that people would want to hear that would allow me to make another record."

Rucker's unflinching honesty resonates throughout a quiet room, adding a palpable earnestness to his statement.

"Success makes me pinch myself because I never feel I've worked hard enough. But I think this album will finally allow me to believe — as much as the fans and industry do — that I've done good."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Darius Rucker gets honest on new album 'Carolyn's Boy'