NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Country star Luke Combs has apologized for appearing with Confederate flags, saying he is now aware of how painful that flag is.
Combs addressed the images during a conversation with singer Maren Morris on Wednesday during a panel for radio stations about responsibility in country music. It occurred weeks after another country star Morgan Wallen was removed radio stations and suspended by his record label after being filmed with a racial slander.
NPR panel moderator and music critic Ann Powers asked Combs about these images during a question and answer session for the Country Radio Seminar, an annual conference of country radio stations, which was held online this year.
“There is no excuse for these images,” said Combs, a 30-year-old singer and songwriter from North Carolina, who has released two multiplatinum albums and several hit country songs.
Combs said the images were seven or eight years old, and when he was younger, he didn’t understand what that flag meant.
“And as I grew up in my time as an artist and the world has changed dramatically in the past five to seven years, I am now aware of how painful that image can be for someone else,” said Combs. “I would never want to be associated with something that brings so much suffering to someone else.”
He said he was approaching the old images now because he wanted to show as a highly visible country artist that people can change and learn from their mistakes. He also wanted to encourage more people in the country music industry to have these difficult conversations.
Gender has had a racial reckoning even before Wallen’s actions, but leading artists are often reluctant to talk about race, both in the present and the past of the genre.
“I’m trying to learn. I’m trying to improve,” said Combs.
Morris also spoke about the Confederate flag, saying that, as a native of Texas, she also didn’t fully understand the history and context of the flag outside of “southern pride” until her teens.
She said that seeing that flag flying at country music festivals makes her not want to touch those festivals and asked country artists to demand that these flags be removed.
She is also one of the few country artists to publicly criticize Wallen spoke on social media and said she had some negative reaction, but it was minimal compared to what blacks regularly face.
“I appreciate Morgan saying ‘stop defending me’ to your fans, because it’s indefensible. He knows that. We know that, ”said Morris. “All we can do, so that there is no elephant in the room, is to say it out loud, hold our colleagues accountable. I don’t care if it’s weird to sit in the same row with you at the next award. “