Artist Thomas Rhett and his wife Lauren love their life in the country with their five children.
“We’ve definitely had our fair share of ups and downs, ‘cause I think that Lauren really…she craves simplicity, at all costs, simplicity,” the country singer said on the “Girls In Low Places” podcast. “She grew up, you know, real country, and her and her daddy would lay in the street at night and look at the stars.”
Rhett and his family live on a large property in Nashville. When the pandemic hit, it allowed him to slip into a slower pace of life. In that period, he wrote 250 songs and reconnected with his dad, college friends and hunting and fishing.
“For me, ‘simple’ would be the word that most describes country to me, the lifestyle,” he told Rolling Stone.
He and Lauren want normalcy, though that’s sometimes hard when you’re famous. They live as simply as they can, but Rhett had to fight not to let fame get to his head.
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“When you walk on stage in front of, you know, 10,000 people, that’s like a rush that you can’t like go replicate. You know what I’m saying? Like you can’t just go like play flag football with your friends and think that’s going to entice the same feeling,” he said.
He’s still shocked, though, when someone cries when he meets them. He doesn’t see himself as worthy of that reaction — and his five children — Willa, 10, Ada, 8, Lennon, 6, Lillie, 4, and Brave, who was born in February — certainly don’t see him like that.
He tries to be as present as he can for his family. He takes his children to school in the morning even when he’s doing late-night concerts.
“It gets so much harder when you have children to make time for each other because there’s so many other bodies that need your full-time assistance,” he explained of working to prioritize his marriage.
When he was at the height of his fame, his marriage suffered.
“I look back at our life during that time, and I’m not — I don’t think I stewarded it very well, to be honest with you,” Rhett said. “Internally I was dying. Like I genuinely, I just liked what was happening so much that I think so much of me was being sucked into the world so hard that it just kept pushing me and her like this.”
Now, he says they are thriving and living his “true self” more than ever before.
Rhett is currently on his Soundtrack to Life tour until Oct. 24.
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