Rodney Atkins was born March 28, 1969, in Knoxville, Tennessee. His biological mother, who was 19 at the time she became pregnant after a “traumatic first date” put him up for adoption.

When not doing chores or playing baseball with friends, Atkins spent time in high school with his guitar. He played, solo or with a band, at county fairs, festivals and shopping malls, untill he signed with Curb Records in 1996. He also did odd jobs to pay his way through school, like driving a delivery truck.

With any successful song, you’ve got to sit back and ask yourself, why did this song connect? With a lot of songs, the approach is about how perfect things are or how messed up things are – it’s one or the other. For me, real life is the ups and downs, and if I can, I like to get both sides of that in a song."

He did not release an album untill 2003’s ‘Honesty’. ‘If You’re Going Through Hell’, his second album, was released in 2006: Its first two singles, “If You’re Going Through Hell” and “Watching You” each spent four weeks at the top of the country music chart, and were respectively ranked as the top country songs of 2006 and 2007 according to Billboard Year-End.

His first two albums especially, allowed him to receive six nominations from the Academy of Country Music and two from the Country Music Association, winning Top New Male Vocalist from the former in 2006.