Nashville wanted Cody Johnson to ditch his cowboy hat before giving him a shot at country music stardom.
The Texas-born country star said he walked away from a record deal after executives suggested he swap his signature cowboy look for a baseball cap — a move he viewed as a demand to change who he was before he could make it in the music business.
“They wanted a baseball cap, which I have nothing against, but it was the approach. It was the ‘you’re great, but once we change you, you’ll make it.’ And it pissed me off,” he said in an interview with “CBS Mornings.” “I tipped my hat and said, ‘Thank you for your time.'”
It was a gamble that could have cost him his shot at stardom.
Instead, Johnson spent the next 10 years building a career on his own terms, playing bars and honky-tonks before becoming one of country music’s biggest stars.
During his interview, Johnson spoke candidly about his rise to fame and the years of work behind his success.
Long before arena crowds and industry recognition, the singer was a small-town Texas kid who dreamed of becoming a rodeo star.
He eventually traded bull riding for music after years of injuries and setbacks and selling CDs in rodeo parking lots as he tried to build a following.
The country star also struggled to believe his ambitions were within reach.
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“Truthfully, in my core, I didn’t feel I was capable of attaining a goal that big, you know, to be a huge country music star, to own a cattle ranch,” Johnson said.
After turning down the label opportunity, he spent years playing small venues, struggling financially and spending long stretches away from his family to keep his career alive.
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“The pressure of knowing that you don’t know how to pay your water bill, and you’ve just been on the road for a month and haven’t seen your wife or your child, and you have nothing to show for it. That’s that’s tough to look in the mirror.”
He continued, “I think that I just had decided at that point that no matter what, no matter how hard, no matter how high the mountain, I will not back down. I will not quit.”
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After a decade of grinding it out as an independent artist, Johnson saw record labels return with another opportunity — this time, he said, without the same demand to change his image.
“I just get to be myself and be authentic,” he said.
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Johnson has built a national following, sold out arenas and earned a place among country music’s leading performers, while keeping the cowboy image he refused to abandon.
He and his wife, Brandi, have been married for more than a decade. They have three children: two daughters and a son.