Ty Myers Says He Writes ‘Real Music’ and Country Drinking Songs. He’s 18

The moment Ty Myers steps onto the stage, the phones go up and remain there largely throughout his concert. When the rising country star walks to the front of the stage, to take a solo or greet front-row fans, the phones close in, surrounding him as if he were a magnet.

Even in an era of saturation, when any note an artist sings can be watched halfway around the world seconds later, Myers’ shows stand out. While a new generation of young singer-songwriters encroaches on country music’s old guard by the day, the Texas barnstormer has found his footing with a fan base hell-bent on capturing every moment Myers affords them. Nearly all of them are teenagers, predominantly female. The ensuing cheers at Myers’ concerts carry a high pitch and youthful zeal. Such a phenomenon prompted one wide-eyed security guard at New York’s Bowery Ballroom to call Myers “the country Justin Bieber” earlier this year.

It’s some — but notably not all — of what Myers dreamed about his entire life.

“There’s no feeling like being onstage, being in that moment, with the crowd giving you that energy, right there in your face,” Myers tells Rolling Stone.

Ty Myers is 18. He crashed country music in 2023 when his song “Tie That Binds” went viral overnight. His debut record, The Select, featured 14 songs written or co-written by Myers, including “Ends of the Earth,” which marked his debut in the Billboard Hot 100. His current single, “Through a Screen,” released in August, is a veritable lament of the life — and digital-savvy fanbase — he has carved out for himself over the past two years.

All of this at 18, a number he wouldn’t mind you looking past.

“At this age, you’re a very emotional creature,” Myers says. “You’ve got a lot of emotions — good, bad, ugly, sad — everything, and it’s all so aggressive. I feel like a lot of older people discount that. They think the number of your age is associated with your capacity for emotion. I would tell people to go back to where your mind was at 16, 17, or 18. Remember how you had, or at least thought you had, an understanding of the world. Your emotions were deep. They were very real. It’s not discounted because you’re not 18 or 21 yet or whatever. It’s an uphill battle, because it’s hard — but it’s also not really hard, because it’s music.

“People like to listen to real music.”

Myers put this on full display in late July during a tour stop at the Tabernacle in downtown Atlanta. By late afternoon, a line of fans — nearly all young females — wrapped around the block, passing the time taking selfies with Myers’ tour bus behind them. When an intense summer storm popped up, most of the fans were undaunted. They’d come too far to bail on the chance to be front-and-center for a Myers show.

Three hours later, those who weathered the deluge get their payoff when Myers takes the stage and asks, “Do you want to get wild tonight?” For a few seconds, the phones are overwhelmed by the free hands of fans who simply want to wave at Myers and maybe catch a smile or a wink in return.

Similar scenes play out at nearly every stop on Myers’ 2025 the Select Tour. He’s learning as he goes about handling fame and pressure, and he has surrounded himself with family. His father, Michael Myers, is a touring musician himself and runs Myers’ production. His mom, Karysa, is Myers’ manager, while his sister, Jocelyn, is his tour photographer. They provide a safety net, no doubt, but they’re on this tour because music and Myers’ family are inseparable from each other. He’s the nephew of Lonestar’s Dean Sams. Another uncle, Ron Huckabay, plays piano in George Strait’s Ace in the Hole Band.

“Thank God I fell in love with music,” Myers says. “Because if I didn’t, I would be pulling my hair out.”

Detractors of Myers’ career success so far generally take one of two forms: venue managers whose alcohol sales fall off significantly when his underage fans sell the place out, or online commenters beside themselves over his age. There’s no helping the former, but the latter could stand to look at Myers not as a teenager but as an 18-year veteran of music. He was born into this life, and he cannot do anything about it.

“From the earliest age you can possibly imagine, I was devoted,” he says. “A lot of people have wanted it for a long time. But I don’t feel like a lot of people have it as their only memory. I really believe that the way the universe works — when it’s not throwing you something unexpected and you had no idea — is that when you believe something is gonna happen, really deep inside, it will. That’s how I was. I didn’t believe that I was put here for any other reason than this.”

Myers hails from Dripping Springs, Texas, just outside of Austin, where Willie Nelson held his first Fourth of July Picnic in 1973. Myers grew up on a ranch, and hunting and fishing were pastimes. He played sports growing up, too. But music cast a shadow over everything. He started writing songs at age 8 and several songs on The Select are ones he wrote circa age 12. When he tore every ligament in his knee playing football as a high school sophomore, Myers took that as a sign to go all-in on music.

In 2023, Myers took four songs, “Tie That Binds,” “But Me,” “Tomorrow’s Out of Sight,” and “Drinkin’ Alone,” into the same studio where his father had recorded an EP a year earlier. He released “Tie That Binds” to streaming services in March of that year, not thinking much of it. That June, his family took a road trip to Key West, stopping in Marathon to spend the night. While Myers, then 16, had dinner and prepared for bed, a TikTok account that aggregates and shares new music picked up “Tie That Binds.”

“I woke up the next morning to my sister shaking me,” Myers recalls. “She was going, ‘Have you seen this TikTok?’ It had a few hundred thousand likes, which was mind-boggling at the time, but I still didn’t think anything would come of it. I thought I’d go back to school and be that guy who had a viral TikTok. We loaded up the car and started the drive from Marathon to Key West. Within 45 minutes, three record labels reached out.”

From there, things got really blurry, really quickly. Thoughts of going back to school, for what would have been his senior year of high school, derailed within weeks and he ultimately chose to pursue music.

But being under the legal drinking age opened Myers up to some criticism when he dropped the song “Drinkin’ Alone,” with lyrics like “90 proof ain’t done nothin’ but prove to me/Washed up and all alone is where you want me to be.” If he’s not old enough to drink, how can he write drinking songs?

Myers says his songwriting heroes, like Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson, influenced his writing topics and, besides, who are we kidding in 2025 anyhow?

“As I got older, I started thinking, ‘Let’s not sit here and act like teenagers aren’t drinking,’” Myers says. “It’s a very old-school way to think about it. I get asked that question all the time, and I’m like, ‘What were you doing at that age?’ I’m not gonna hide the truth because it’s what society wants me to do. I would get it if it was some sort of societal norm to not talk about it, but we’re at a point that everything is out in the open. My goal is to connect with the audience, and I’m going to write about what I think will connect with them.”

In August, Myers released “Through a Screen,” a love song aimed at the same people holding up those phones at his shows. It’s a commentary on sharing intimate moments on opposite ends of a video call rather than face-to-face.

There’s a lot more where that came from. Myers has been spending time at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, working on the follow-up to The Select. It’s a project that he says will showcase a range beyond the hard-country twang of current catalog. He’s a huge John Mayer fan and is looking to incorporate elements of R&B and soul into his music.

When he puts it out, fans will find out the same way they learned about “Tie That Binds.”

“The best way I can put it is that social media is the new, more efficient, poster,” Myers says. “Think about the Eighties and Nineties, when people would go around town putting up tour posters, using a stapler, and buying packs after packs of staples. Well, you don’t have to do that now — it’s all right here in your phone.”

Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose latest books, Never Say Never and Red Dirt Unplugged are available via Back Lounge Publishing.