Chris Stapleton on Black Lives Matter Movement: ‘It’s Time for Me to Listen’
Chris Stapleton has had a lot of time to think during the novel coronavirus pandemic. Off the road due to virus-prompted shutdowns and at home with his wife and five children, the country star admits that he's had highs and lows, mentally, and that his view of the United States has changed.
"You know, I thought we were living in a different country. And that's 100-percent real," Stapleton tells CBS This Morning. "I feel like the country that I thought that we were living in was a myth."
There's "a lot of work to do, you know, as individuals and as a society," the singer adds to journalist Anthony Mason. "And if you don't think that, I think you're not looking."
Stapleton and Mason's conversation touched specifically on the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests and marches that have been taking place throughout the country following the late-May death of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, at the hands of a white police officers, and several other similar deaths and shootings in the months since. The artist, when asked, is straightforward in his reply:
"Do I think Black lives matter? Absolutely ... I don't know how you could think they don't," Stapleton says.
"I think everybody should be doing more," the artist adds, explaining that it's his job, as a white man, in this moment to pay attention to what others are saying:
"There's a very broad awakening that I guess has come about, and It's time for me to listen. And it's time for other folks to listen," he says.
Stapleton is set to release a new album, Starting Over, in November; he finished the project around the time quarantine restrictions began taking effect in the Nashville area. The project's first single is its title track, but also among its songs is "Watch You Burn," which he wrote in reply to the 2017 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas.
"It's a powerful number to me that conveys the sentiment: Hey, let's cut the evil s--t out," Stapleton describes. "It's a plea in some ways."
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