Corey Kent White grew up touring in a western swing band before he was a teenager, got a Willie Nelson push toward songwriting, and turned a viral streaming hit into a major-label deal.
A traveling band kid from Oklahoma
Corey Kent White was born in Bixby, Oklahoma, and grew up on the country music of fellow Oklahoman Garth Brooks. At just 11, he joined a touring western swing group and spent five years on the road with them before the band dissolved.
Still in high school, he nearly walked away from music entirely, until he was pulled out of a crowd to join Willie Nelson on stage, a moment he has credited with pushing him toward songwriting. At 17 he moved to Tennessee and landed a publishing deal, only to lose it; he moved back to Texas just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
"Wild as Her" and a Nashville bidding war
As venues reopened, Kent built a following on the Texas and Oklahoma club circuit, opening for Randy Rogers, Parker McCollum, Kolby Cooper and Cody Johnson. His song "Wild as Her," from his independent album '21, caught on through streaming in 2022 and climbed the Billboard charts, triggering what Billboard itself called a bidding war among Nashville labels.
RCA Nashville signed Kent in August 2022 and took "Wild as Her" to country radio. The song passed 300 million streams in its first year, went Platinum in March 2023, and gave him his first country radio No. 1 in May 2023; it is now 3x Platinum.
Three albums into a sound he calls "Heartland Rock and Roll"
His major-label debut, "Blacktop" (2023), produced the Platinum single "Something's Gonna Kill Me." "Black Bandana" (2024) followed with the Gold-certified "This Heart," and 2025 brought "Poster Child" and the Koe Wetzel duet "Rocky Mountain Low."
In 2026 he announced his next album, "Heartland Rock and Roll," out September 25, calling it the first record where he finally named the genre-blurring country-rock-soul sound he had been chasing for years. Its lead-up singles included the viral "Empty Words," logging over 3 million streams a week, and a Jason Aldean collaboration, "Rather Be Here."
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