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Since its July 25th release, fans have spent the better part of the last 10 days arguing, meme-ifying, and apparently, listening quite a bit to Snipe Hunter, the latest album from country star Tyler Childers. Produced by Rick Rubin, the Kentucky singer’s sixth album has spawned a TikTok-viral song about rabies, theories about Beyoncé shoutouts, and a glut of predictable discourse about whether or not Childers has abandoned his traditional sound and roots by making a bigger budget, more genre-defiant record.
Plenty of fans seem to love the new record (including Rolling Stone, which gave the album 4.5 stars in a recent review). And plenty of fans are furious that Childers has embraced studio bells and whistles — there’s vocoder and drum loops on some songs — and is no longer singing exclusively about hardscrabble Appalachian life à la his 2017 debut Purgatory.
Those in the latter camp appear to be just a vocal minority: Childers’ Snipe Hunter debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200, the weekly list of top performing albums in all genres. This marks Childers’ highest-ever chart debut, after his last two albums, 2023’s Rustin’ in the Rain and 2022’s Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?, debuted at Nos. 10 and 8, respectively.
Snipe Hunter also debuted at No. 2 on Top Country Albums, bested only by Morgan Wallen’s juggernaut I’m the Problem. Childers’ latest also topped the Americana/Folk Albums chart.
While the rabies ditty “Bitin’ List” is already becoming inescapable on TikTok, it remains to be seen if any songs on the album will receive country-radio airplay. His 2023 ballad “In Your Love” was his first charting single on country radio, rising to a meager No. 43 last year before stalling out.
In the days following the release of Snipe Hunter, Childers unveiled a promotional campaign as left-field as the country album he’d just released, scheduling live performances at a Nashville sandwich shop and a Kentucky roadside attraction devoted to Dinosaur replicas.
