Country star Chris Stapleton isn’t interested in becoming a culture-war lightning rod — and he’s not shy about saying so. The 47-year-old hitmaker opened up about his intentional approach during a recent appearance on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, where he talked about why he avoids controversy and instead focuses on the power of music to bring people together.

Shepard and co-host Monica Padman praised Stapleton for having a rare kind of appeal that crosses age, geography, and even genre lines. “People almost lit our studio on fire for having Jason Aldean on,” Shepard joked, prompting Stapleton to acknowledge that some artists “court controversy.” But that’s not for him. “Some people wanna discuss things that aren’t about music or make that part of their thing, and it’s not part of my thing,” the “Tennessee Whiskey” singer explained.

Part of what makes Stapleton stand out, Shepard suggested, is that his songwriting feels universal. “There’s something about your writing that people really gravitate towards regardless of their specific musical tastes,” he said. Padman agreed, noting that fans from Los Angeles to Georgia were equally excited to tune in for Stapleton’s interview. Their podcast, she added, tries to “show humanity” rather than contribute to division.

Stapleton responded by pointing back to the heart of his craft. “In a musical space, my job is to connect to the music and then put that out in the world and let people find themselves in it,” he said. To him, a song isn’t truly alive until it finds a listener. “No song means anything until it goes out into the world and people hear it and attach themselves to it… It has zero meaning until that happens.”

At the core of his philosophy is the belief that music is meant to unify — not divide. “People like sad songs so they don’t feel alone,” Stapleton said. “Maybe all songs are that way. And then we wanna feel those emotions together. There’s a communal thing in that.” Even a solitary moment—like driving alone and hearing a song that suddenly feels personal—becomes something shared. “All of a sudden, you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s somebody else in the world that understands this thing I’m going through.'”

For Stapleton, that is the true “magic of music”: the way it connects people in a way that conversations or debates sometimes can’t. In a cultural moment where controversy can be a career strategy, Stapleton’s refusal to play that game has only made his voice—and his songs—resonate more widely.