Luke Combs Put 22 Songs on His New Album. The Alison Krauss Track Is the One to Watch.

Luke Combs has never been accused of holding back. His debut, This One's for You, went five-times platinum. His tours sell out stadiums. He outsold Garth Brooks, something his own parents told him would never happen. But 22 songs on a single album is a lot, even for him.

The Way I Am, his sixth studio album, drops March 20 on Columbia Nashville. Combs revealed the full tracklist on February 11, and the sheer volume of it raises an obvious question: does a 22-track country album need to exist in 2026?

The tracklist tells a story if you know where to look

Five songs were already out before the announcement: "My Kinda Saturday Night," "Days Like These," "15 Minutes," "Giving Her Away," and "Back in the Saddle." A sixth, "Sleepless in a Hotel Room," has been climbing US Country Radio and just cracked the Top 20. That means listeners walking into The Way I Am on release day will have already heard more than a quarter of the album.

The new single "Be By You," Track 19, drops today, February 13, just in time for Valentine's Day. It's one of only three songs on the record that Combs didn't co-write, alongside the title track and "Giving Her Away." For an artist who co-wrote 19 of 22 tracks on a single project, that ratio speaks to how involved Combs is in his own material.

But the real story on this tracklist is Track 15: "Ever Mine," featuring Alison Krauss.

Why Alison Krauss matters here

Krauss has 27 Grammy Awards. She's sold more than 17 million albums in the US. Her voice is one of the most recognizable in American music. And she almost never shows up on mainstream country records.

Combs wrote "Ever Mine" with Hailey Whitters and Charlie Worsham, both respected Nashville songwriters who tend to work in the space between country tradition and modern production. Bringing Krauss into that equation suggests Combs is reaching for something more rooted than his usual output.

He's done this before. In 2021, he collaborated with Billy Strings on "The Great Divide," a bluegrass-leaning track that showed he could move outside his lane without losing his audience. Strings was still building his crossover profile at the time. Krauss is a different proposition entirely. She brings a weight of legacy that changes how a song gets received.

The fact that she's the only feature on a 22-song album makes the choice even more pointed. Combs could have loaded this thing with Nashville cameos. Instead, he picked one collaborator, and he picked someone whose presence says something about what kind of record he's trying to make.

The Cody Johnson connection

Track 14, "I Ain't No Cowboy," was co-written by Combs, Cody Johnson, and Jake Mears. Johnson isn't listed as a performer, but the connection runs deeper than a songwriting credit. Johnson recently confirmed in an interview with Audacy that he and Combs "cut one together" for Johnson's upcoming album. Combs first performed "I Ain't No Cowboy" live in New Zealand, which means the song has been in rotation long enough to have been road-tested internationally before it made the tracklist.

Two of country's biggest active artists sharing songs across albums is worth paying attention to. Johnson won CMA Male Vocalist of the Year. Combs has won CMA Entertainer of the Year twice. A shared song on one album and a shared recording session for another suggests an ongoing creative relationship, not just a one-off feature.

22 songs is a choice

The modern album economy punishes length. Streaming platforms reward repeat plays, and most listeners don't sit through 22 tracks front to back. Country has historically been more forgiving of long albums than pop or hip-hop, but even by country standards, this is a commitment.

Combs addressed the timeline in his announcement: "It's been a long process getting this thing going, but I'm really proud of this record." His last full-length was 2024's Fathers & Sons, which means The Way I Am has had roughly 18 months of development, a reasonable window for a project this size.

Produced by Combs, Jonathan Singleton, and Chip Matthews, the album was built from a larger pool of material than what made the final cut. Last August, Combs teased 14 demos on a "secret" Instagram account. According to Whiskey Riff, only one of those demos, the closing track "A Man Was Born," actually survived to the final tracklist. The rest were either reworked or replaced entirely, which suggests the album went through significant revision even after the initial writing sessions.

Other tracks worth noting

"Daytona 499" first appeared as an Easter egg in the "Back in the Saddle" music video, which featured NASCAR legends Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Richard Petty. "Wish Upon Whiskey" was first performed live in February 2025. "Rethink Some Things" and "Be By You" were both teased as full studio snippets in recent weeks.

The day after The Way I Am releases, Combs launches his My Kinda Saturday Night Tour on March 21 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. The tour crosses North America and Europe, wrapping August 1 at Wembley Stadium in London. For a 35-year-old artist on his sixth album, that trajectory, from North Carolina bars to Wembley, is worth noting on its own.

The real question

Twenty-two songs is either generous or exhausting, depending on your patience. Combs has the commercial track record to justify the ambition. This One's for You hit No. 5 on the Billboard 200, a rare crossover achievement for a debut country album. Every subsequent project has charted well. The audience exists.

But the Krauss collaboration, the Johnson co-write, the 14 scrapped demos, and the single-feature-on-22-tracks approach all suggest Combs is thinking about this record differently than a simple content dump. Whether that intention translates to a cohesive listening experience is something we'll find out on March 20.