Fans may be arguing about the Kentucky songwriter’s left-field LP, but they’re also playing it a lot too: It debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200
Since its July 25th release, fans have spent the better part of the last 10 days arguing, meme-ifying, and apparently, listening quite a bit to Snipe Hunter, the latest album from country star Tyler Childers. Produced by Rick Rubin, the Kentucky singer’s sixth album has spawned a TikTok-viral song about rabies, theories about Beyoncé shoutouts, and a glut of predictable discourse about whether or not Childers has abandoned his traditional sound and roots by making a bigger budget, more genre-defiant record.
Plenty of fans seem to love the new record (including Rolling Stone, which gave the album 4.5 stars in a recent review). And plenty of fans are furious that Childers has embraced studio bells and whistles — there’s vocoder and drum loops on some songs — and is no longer singing exclusively about hardscrabble Appalachian life à la his 2017 debut Purgatory.
Those in the latter camp appear to be just a vocal minority: Childers’ Snipe Hunter debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200, the weekly list of top performing albums in all genres. This marks Childers’ highest-ever chart debut, after his last two albums, 2023’s Rustin’ in the Rain and 2022’s Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?, debuted at Nos. 10 and 8, respectively.
While the rabies ditty “Bitin’ List” is already becoming inescapable on TikTok, it remains to be seen if any songs on the album will receive country-radio airplay. His 2023 ballad “In Your Love” was his first charting single on country radio, rising to a meager No. 43 last year before stalling out.
In the days following the release of Snipe Hunter, Childers unveiled a promotional campaign as left-field as the country album he’d just released, scheduling live performances at a Nashville sandwich shop and a Kentucky roadside attraction devoted to Dinosaur replicas.
