Big wins for Kentucky at the Grammys: Tyler Childers wins first, Stapleton his 12th
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Tyler Childers won his first Grammy for Best Country Song for “Bitin’ List.”
- Chris Stapleton earned his 12th Grammy for Best Country Solo Performance.
- Both artists competed in three categories and will tour near Kentucky.
It was a pretty good Grammy haul on Sunday for Eastern Kentucky’s country music coalition.
Lawrence Country sensation Tyler Childers won his first-ever honor for Best Country Song at the 68th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. The award was for “Bitin’ List,” a tune Childers wrote for his 2025 album “Snipe Hunter.”
Lexington-born, Johnson County-raised Stapleton took home his 12th Grammy in the Best Country Solo Performance category for “Bad as I Used to Be.” The song was featured as part of the soundtrack for the recent Brad Pitt car racing movie “F1.” It is Stapleton’s first new recording since the release of his fifth album, “Higher,” in 2023.
Neither Childers or Stapleton was in attendance, although Childers’ band The Food Stamps accepted on his behalf in a ceremony held Sunday afternoon ahead of the Grammys’ evening telecast. “He keeps us all grinning like mules eating saw briars,” said Foods Stamps multi-instrumentalist Jesse Wells of Childers during the acceptance speech for the award.
An instructor and archivist at the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music at Morehead State University when not on the road with Childers, Wells told the audience that he was “not that Jesse Welles.” The reference was to an artist with the same name, but slightly different spelling — Jesse Welles — who was nominated at the same ceremony for four folk, roots and Americana Grammys.
Childers and Stapleton actually competed against each other in three Grammy categories, including the ones each artist won in. Childers won over “A Song to Sing,” a work Stapleton co-wrote (and recorded as a duet) with Miranda Lambert for Best Country Song. Stapleton won over Childers’ “Nose on the Grindstone” for Best Country Solo Performance.
Childers is set to return to Lexington for a headlining performance on June 7 at Railbird. Stapleton, who headlined Railbird in 2024, will make his closest concert appearance to Central Kentucky on Aug. 1 with a performance at PayCor Stadium in Cincinnati.
This story was originally published February 2, 2026 at 10:41 AM.