Georgia-born singer/songwriter Thomas Rhett, the son of award-winning country crooner Rhett Akins, didn’t seriously start considering following in his father's footsteps until his senior year in high school. Raised on a steady diet of Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Led Zeppelin, and the Rolling Stones, Rhett inked a publishing deal with EMI just two years into his college career, and landed a song ("I Ain't Ready to Quit") on fellow country rocker Jason Aldean's 2010 release, My Kind of Party. Like Aldean, Brantley Gilbert, and Justin Moore, Rhett splits the difference between slick, contemporary country and rowdy good-time rock & roll, an equation he put to the test on his 2011 debut single "Something to Do with My Hands." An EP, simply called Thomas Rhett, appeared early in 2013, and later that year his debut full-length, It Goes Like This, arrived. The album reached number six on the Billboard 200 and the Top 30 in Canada. Led by the single "Crash and Burn," which made both countries' Hot 100 and was a Top Ten hit on Billboard's country songs charts, his sophomore album, Tangled Up, was slated for fall 2015.
James Christopher Monger
AllMusic.com
