Album Review – Luke Combs – “The Way I Am”
Country Pop (#530.2) and Country (#500) on the Country DDS. AI = (Unavailable)
You can most definitely do worse in mainstream country than Luke Combs. In 2026, you can also do much better. But when you’re Luke Combs, you’re not just an artist, or a singer, or a songwriter, or a performer. You’re a franchise. You’re an industry all unto yourself with a staff of employees and an infrastructure that needs to be supported and seeded with interest, lest it implode and be reconstituted behind the next Morgan Wallen doppelganger.
It isn’t that Luke Combs doesn’t have the right instincts or knowledge to be the kind of country music artist who could build a greater consensus between country music’s mainstream and independent fans, which in 2026 are almost split in population 50/50. He’s touted folks as far ranging as Billy Strings and The Wilder Blue in the past. Like Dierks Bentley and his dalliances with authentic bluegrass, Luke Combs knows what’s what. He just exists in a universe where you’re only allowed to dabble briefly in the real stuff, or you could lose your spot at the top of the heap.
But in 2024, Luke Combs did much more than dabble. His album Fathers & Sons was an incredibly heartfelt, well-written, and well-executed work of multi-generational love and reflection through country music the likes we rarely see from the mainstream. But typically, the label didn’t know what to do with it, didn’t promote a single from it to radio, and didn’t give it the big awards show push it deserved. In the Luke Combs world, they only know one real avenue to attention: radio.
Fathers & Sons came at a time when Combs dialed back touring and public appearances to be with his sons and growing family. But as the cautionary tale of the legacy of Clint Black teaches us, you prioritize family over career in country music at grave peril. So Luke Combs needed a jolt, a retrenching, a big splash to re-establish he’s still a big fish in country, only a few years removed from his two-time CMA Entertainer of the Year wins (2021-2022).
Enter The Way I Am. The first track and first single of this 22-song work called “Back In The Saddle” is a country music equivalent of LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out,” boldly and somewhat slavishly angling for the mainstream’s undivided attention yet again. The second song on the album “My Kinda Saturday Night” is an unabashed neo Bro-Country list-tastic track pandering to the mainstream radio set. No half measures are taken here. Luke Combs needs hits, and right out of the chute, works to seed them.
But The Way I Am isn’t a sellout record exactly. Really what it should be regarded as is two completely separate records smashed together constituting the 22-track, 1-hour 13-minute run time. One album is a very commercially-oriented work of radio country unabashedly feeding red meat to program directors and algorithms at “Hot Country” stations and streaming playlists. But the other is a more heartfelt and intentional effort to underpin Luke’s career with substance.
Right after the aforementioned boisterous Bro-angling of “My Kinda Saturday Night,” there is a curiously short transition into the understated, reflective, and completely acoustic song “Days Like These.” This is followed by the storytelling aspects of “15 Minutes” framed around an incarcerated son speaking to his mother.
Granted, even Luke’s deeper, more sentimental songs on The Way I Am are similar to the Cheerios commercial that might make you cry—meaning sort of predictable and opportunist in how they exploit emotion in an audience. They’re the network TV equivalent of your favorite streaming series. There is not a song on this album that could best any of the songs on Luke’s Fathers & Sons. But don’t entirely discount the effort to try for deeper moments.
In an era that’s given permission to extend track lists, you no longer have to be only one thing to one audience. You can try to serve multiple constituencies and appetites. A record can unfold like its own mixtape. That approach has been behind so much of Morgan Wallen’s success. Combs will make you cringe on this record with an R&B-infused track like “Rethink Some Things,” or the cliché writing of “Alcohol of Fame.” Then he’ll win you back with “Ever Mine” featuring Alison Krauss, or the storytelling behind “I Ain’t No Cowboy” or “Rich Man.”
The simple truth is that the success of artists like Tyler Childers, or songs like Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” means you don’t just have to serve the algorithm what it wishes, or what you think it wants. There are entirely new avenues, and sometimes risk taking is rewarded well above the benefits of mainstream country radio play. But the allure of playing it safe, staying the course, and keeping a steady hand on the rudder has proven to be insurmountable for many of these mainstream artists.
Luke Combs did what he wanted to do for the last few years, putting family first, both in his life, and in his music. But lest his career slip through his hands via the callous and shallow country music industry that priorities the bottom dollar, he needed to retrench. The Way I Am is not a bad record. It’s a Luke Combs record that will keep the franchise strong for the next couple of years and tour cycle. It truly is the way Luke Combs is, and who he must be to maintain his level of fame.
6.8/10
– – – – – – – – –
– – – – – – – –
If you found this article valuable, consider leaving Saving Country Music A TIP.
March 30, 2026 @ 11:34 am
This one was a mixed bag for me. I found “Gettin’ Old” to be a much more cohesive and polished album. I also didn’t feel the need to grade that record on the “radio country” curve, as it stood pretty well on its own. The good stuff ultimately made this one worth the listen, but I probably won’t revisit it much.
I like the Dierks comparison because I found myself listening to this album much like I do all of his recent output: hopeful, sometimes satisfied, but more interested in other projects.
March 30, 2026 @ 12:45 pm
Alcohol of fame is a cool track lol
March 30, 2026 @ 1:05 pm
The way I am don’t fit my shackles…
March 30, 2026 @ 3:14 pm
I can almost see that bobber dancing….
Another vote for Sonny Throckmorton for the HoF.
March 30, 2026 @ 2:05 pm
I don’t share your assessment. In my opinion, it’s Luke Combs’ best album, an album you can enjoy from beginning to end. For me, a clear 8! I would have liked you to have rated each track separately. I love and enjoy reading your work, but as soon as popular country music comes up, the tone changes negatively. Of course, I like your compilation of your best country songs, but I have the feeling that artists like Luke Combs or Jason Aldean wouldn’t stand
March 30, 2026 @ 2:53 pm
I try to be very fair with mainstream albums and if anything grade them on a curve when they include good songs. Luke’s last album got an 8.1 here, and his album before that, a 7.0. 6.8 is still a positive review. I would have liked to do song reviews, but I can’t do that for every record. I did make sure to highlight through the review the songs that I though were standouts and subpar. If it’s an 8 to you, that’s all that matters and I respect that opinion. There’s some good songs here.
March 30, 2026 @ 2:56 pm
15 minutes did hit me hard immediately and I loved the Allison Krause song. If you took the 12 best songs here hey maybe you got something. But doubt Luke would share my assessment of 12 best songs if he went that way.
Will say, whatever else you say about the bad songwriting in some places(and it’s bad in places), I do think the instrumentation is good throughout. Unless I missed it even the bad songs sound country. No trap beats no snaps none of the worst Morgan wallen stuff
March 30, 2026 @ 2:08 pm
’15 Minutes’ is a decent track and has more thoughtful songwriting than many of his other songs by ending a series of monotonous throwaway lines with series ones like “you think dad will ever talk to me again” and “does Jesus really forgive all my sins?”
‘I Ain’t a Cowboy’ exemplifies why clique songwriting is quickly forgotten. Lines in the chorus are absolutely generic:
“rode off together in the setting sun”
“been what she needed when”
“kicked up a cloud of dust”
That is the kind of songwriting I expect to hear in AI created Country songs on some boomer’s Facebook page, or in a Lainey Wilson song.
March 30, 2026 @ 2:10 pm
…no matter what they produced. Take Jason Aldean, for example: Isn’t there a single song in his songbook that you don’t find powerful? Is it just because of his success, or simply because he doesn’t write every song himself? I think country music is more than strict guidelines and rules…it’s about feelings, heart, and stories from the past and the present.
March 30, 2026 @ 2:58 pm
What?
March 30, 2026 @ 2:43 pm
I’m not a Combs hater by any means – I have some of his songs on pretty heavy rotation, and I think he has the capacity to do great stuff – but I think that 6.8 is really, really generous on this mess of an album.
That said, I agree that 15 Minutes is a real highlight. It’s by no means the first country prison song, of course (and it’s no Ellis Unit One or Billy Austin), but it’s doing something that isn’t just another drinking song or love song.
March 30, 2026 @ 3:06 pm
The two “bangers” that led off the album were easily the worst tracks on it. The whole thing would have made a much better impression on me had they been left out.
As a Combs fan, I found your rating accurate. “Gettin’ Old” was far better, as was “What You See Is What You Get.”
This album is more on the level of “Growin’ Up,” a pleasant but generally unexceptional collection of songs. “Rich Man” and “Fifteen Minutes” elevate “The Way I Am” above that album all by themselves.