country

Hudson Westbrook

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Texas country riser with a barroom baritone — 'Take It Slow' took him from regional to national inside a year.

Hudson Brown Westbrook was born May 21, 2004, and raised on a cattle farm in Stephenville, Texas, before settling in Lubbock. He enrolled at Texas Tech University, working at a feed store while studying toward a career as a landman, and had been singing since his freshman year of high school, mostly for his mother and friends, without expecting it to become a job.

He began posting songs online in the mid-2020s and playing bars and clubs around the state before 'Take It Slow' went viral on TikTok, drawing millions of views and pulling him out of college entirely. He announced the decision to his mother during a live performance; his parents were wary at first but came around once the scale of the response became clear, and he bought a bus and began touring almost immediately, still in his early twenties and without the long regional apprenticeship many Texas acts serve.

His writing leans on the plainer end of contemporary country, with steel guitar and electric leads behind a low, roughened voice, and lyrics that stay close to small-town settings, drinking and the aftermath of relationships. The result sits somewhere between the Red Dirt tradition and the more radio-shaped Nashville sound, performed with a full band.

The follow-up single, 'Two Way Drive,' kept the momentum going, and 'House Again,' a ballad written about his parents' divorce, became his first song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching number 47.

His debut album, Texas Forever, arrived on July 25, 2025, seventeen songs of country-rock that include 'Funny Seeing You Here,' 'Momma Raised a Winner' and 'Lie to Me,' a duet with Mackenzie Carpenter; it opened at number 59 on the Billboard 200. Westbrook had planned to keep the project close to Texas, but has since taken the material on tour further afield.

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