Country Star Thomas Rhett said he had never heard the phrase “wife guy” before, but he had a pretty intuitive understanding of the phenomenon, a versatile internet description of what happens when a marriage becomes part of a meme. “I feel like I’ve seen some of them, and some of them really creep me out,” said the singer, born Thomas Rhett Akins. Vanity Fair a few days before the release of his seventh studio album, About a woman. “The whole thing of putting your phone on the dashboard and saying, ‘I’m playing this song to my wife for the first time’? I’m like, No, you’re not doing that.”
So while Rhett doesn’t want to be one of those viral wife guys, he admits that his wife, Lauren Akins, is a huge part of his personality, both publicly and privately. “So much of who I am today is because of her, and so much of my personality is not what it was 10 years ago,” he says. “She loves so deeply and so fiercely, and I’m a very passionate person, so we do everything a million percent. I think that’s why it’s so easy to write about her.”
“The Woman” in About a woman Obviously Lauren, the childhood sweetheart he married in 2012. If you don’t know Thomas Rhett for the 20 Country Airplay No. 1 singles he’s had over the past decade, you might know him for the picture-perfect family photos the couple shares on Instagram. On his new album, Rhett delivers a tight collection of pop-country love songs inspired by his nearly 12-year marriage, written and recorded with the hope that his wife and four daughters might dance along.
Rhett thought he had succeeded, and Lauren was involved in this promotional cycle like never before. “It’s her favorite record I’ve ever done, because it’s fast-paced, and even the songs that aren’t fast-paced, they have that bounce and they have that confidence,” he says. “I think she appreciates the lyrics, but she’s more drawn to the melody. We focused a lot more on melody on this project than we’ve ever done before, which was a big change of pace for me because I’m a big lyricist. I obsess over lyrics and wordplay and turning things upside down. And so I wanted to come in and make songs that felt more straightforward.”
In his quest to create danceable music, he enlisted two longtime friends and collaborators to produce, Dann Huff And Julian Bunetta. Rhett says Bunetta, a songwriter and producer who started his career working on some of One Direction’s hits, has especially helped him focus on creating something less intellectual. “Before, I always had to have this crazy, deep answer for why I picked a song,” Rhett says. “Julian was a great mentor on this project. He’d be like, Well, do you like it? I was like, Yeah. He was like, Why? I was like, I don’t know. I think I learned that that’s a good enough answer for a song instead of, Well, there’s this wildflower I saw driving from Austin to Tupelo.”
Bunetta has been working with Rhett since 2016, but when the two wrote the song in 2023, Bunetta was also working on a few different projects that made him one of the hottest names in pop music—“Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter and “Out of Control” of Teddy swims. Bunetta’s disco sheen pervades the entire album without overshadowing Rhett’s country vocals, even giving songs that sound like Elvis or the Rolling Stones a modern edge.
Rhett wrote love songs for Lauren years before it became part of his identity as an artist. “For me, it was never a strategy. It was never like, Maybe I can make marriage great and love great,” he says. “When I sit down at the piano or the guitar, that’s what comes out. My dad always told me to write about what I know best, and I know her best.”
One of those love songs, “Die a Happy Man,” was included on his 2015 album, which came with a video starring Lauren. The song won song of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards, bringing Rhett his first taste of attention outside the genre and making Lauren a public figure. She’s a natural in front of the camera—she has a bright smile and a captivating voice—but it’s not where she expected to end up after graduating from the University of Tennessee with a nursing degree more than a decade ago.
The couple got married after Rhett signed a record deal but before his career took off, and neither he nor Lauren really expected him to find lasting success in the industry. “There was a part of her that probably thought, Oh, we’ll do this for a few years, and then he’ll get a regular job and I’ll be a nurse,” he says. But his career took off incredibly quickly, and eventually those plans changed. “When our marriage counselor said, [Lauren] touring with me for the first year, I think she was a little heartbroken because she had spent the last five years grinding. I think she found herself working from 7pm to 7am in the hospital.”
