Published 2026-07-05 01.35
CONCERT On the fourth of July, Luke Combs will perform the Nordic region’s biggest country concert ever. The North Carolina singer’s music resembles a caricature of the genre.
But the everyday humility and naive optimism is hard to resist.
Luke Combs
Place: Ullevi, Gothenburg. Audience: 60,826. Length: 2 hours. Best: “Better together”. Worst: That Combs’ songs have roughly the same tempo and temperament. Question: Has a band presentation ever made a person happy?
GOTHENBURG. Luke Combs audiences have, to say the least, embraced the trend of dressing according to the artist’s look. There are cowboy hats and double denim everywhere you look – and the snakeskin patterned boots are probably sold out on both sides of the Norwegian border.
So, how did country become a thing for Ullevi?
Let’s rewind the tape.
Internationally, the genre has grown in strength in recent years. Beyonce and Post Malone has recorded country albums, artists such as Shaboozey and Lil Nas X have married flannel shirts with beats – and cowboycore has become the unofficial dress code at concerts with pop stars who Taylor Swift and Harry Styles.
In parallel, more pure country artists have reached the biggest stages. Chris Stapleton, Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan are just some of them.
Three years after Sweden debut at Avicii Arena makes Luke Combs Nordic’s biggest country concert ever.
The clock strikes twenty-three minutes to nine Neil Diamonds “Sweet Caroline” over Ullevi to the audience’s blissful response. In a baseball cap from the favorite team Asheville Tourists, black shirt and inconspicuous pants, Combs walks onto the stage. Aesthetically, he is reminiscent of a number of contemporary colleagues – from Teddy Swims to Hozier – a category of artists who seem to have stumbled into the music industry and just happened to become arena big.
The 36-year-old’s musty voice blows around in the evening breeze. Sometimes it doesn’t quite reach the highest notes – rather it sounds broken, like the result of all the whiskey that figures in his lyrics.
Combs rarely complicates his music significantly. If there is a straight highway to the audience’s hearts, he blows at 140. Song titles such as “Back in the saddle” and “Beer never broke my heart” speak for themselves.
That the American’s chart country has more than legitimately effective choruses actually becomes more apparent on stage than on streaming services. “Tell ’em about tonight”, “Must’ve never met you” and “When it rains it pours” reach high up on Ullevi’s rounded stands. The drinking song “Alcohol of fame” makes the arena’s dusty concrete vibrate.
The party culminates when the NHL stars Rasmus Dahlin, Lucas Raymond and Simon Edvinssonas well as the homemason Victor Leksellcomes in and shoots on stage.
Between songs, the singer hums humbly and gratefully in his red beard about what a hospitable city Gothenburg is. He even asks the audience to give a round of applause to his amazing wife who is at home taking care of their three sons – 0, 2 and 4 years old (gods know she deserves it).
The equally bearded and skilled band does exactly what they’re supposed to – and more. When they fall silent in favor of just a piano in “Better together”, it is suddenly heard that Combs can be a really pleasant singer. The love ballad manages to make the clichés felt – Coca-Cola cans and air rifles, freshly harvested corn fields, her lipstick on his coffee cup.
At the end of the concert, the singer tells us that “Fast car” was one of the first songs he ever heard, and that the opening pick was all he wanted to learn when he picked up the guitar at 21. Tracy Chapman– the cover was recorded by accident – but is and remains perhaps the artist’s biggest hit.
It is naturally impossible not to feel Chapman’s classics. Most of all, it becomes a reminder of the stories that the evening’s protagonist himself lacks.
But at least he manages to make a few lines his own: “You and I can both get jobs/And finally see what it means to be living”.
They ring in the naïve optimism that, after all, pervades Luke Combs’ own songwriting and that shines brighter than the evening’s closing fireworks.
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All the songs
1. My kinda Saturday night 2. Lovin’ on you 3. Hurricane 4. She got the best of me 5. Tell ’em about tonight 6. One number away 7. Miss you here 8. Back in the saddle 9. Must’ve never met you 10. The kind of love we make 11. Sleepless in a hotel room 12. Rethink some things 13. Forever after all 14. Better together 15. I ain’t no cowboy 16. Wish upon a whiskey 17. Remember him that way 18. Be by you 19. Beautiful crazy 20. Crazy train/She will be loved/Billie Jean/I don’t wanna miss a thing/Something like that 21. Alcohol of fame 22. Cold as you 23. When it rains it pours 24. 1, 2 many 25. Beer never broke my heart Encore: 26. Fast car (Tracy Chapman cover) 27. Where the wild things are 28. Ain’t no love in Oklahoma
