This article contains references to suicide.
Wyatt Flores doesn’t want to talk about politics.
The 24-year-old rising country music star says he doesn’t see it as his place to get involved in arguing about political issues in the US.
“I would rather shed light on darkness,” he tells the Feed during a recent visit to Australia.
“I just know what I’m all about. And that is trying to give people hope to live life as full as possible ... because that’s what I’m good at.”
Despite the relative youth of his career, Flores has proved himself in his mission of confronting dark topics and giving audiences hope.
‘Red Dirt’ country and Please Don’t Go
Flores was born into a tradition of country music known as Red Dirt country. Named for the iron rust colour of the soil in Oklahoma, the genre blends elements of rock, blues and folk.
Flores’ father was the former drummer of renowned Red Dirt band The Great Divide, and the band became Flores’ musical mentors as a child.
From this tradition, he has now instilled a deep love of storytelling into his own music — and become known for disarmingly honest lyrics that delve deeply into emotional topics, particularly around issues of mental health and suicide.
In 2023, Flores made his first appearance on the US Billboard charts with his song Please Don’t Go, a song he later revealed centered on suicidal thoughts and a troubled relationship he was in at the time.
He says he knew he was onto something valuable with Please Don’t Go when he sat his two best friends — who were rarely sincere about Flores’ music career — down at a kitchen table to play them the song. It made them both cry.
“It was a song about, you know, the person that you love and you see them going through the struggles and you're starting to think that they might do harmful things to themselves,” he says.
“And that was where I was back in that time. I was in a really rough relationship. That was me and her — we were both just holding on for dear life.”
The song resonated profoundly with audiences who were enduring their own mental health challenges and gained Flores viral attention; an explanation about the song’s meaning that he produced for TikTok has been viewed over 2.1 million times.
Flores sees songwriting as an opportunity to open a necessary dialogue about suicide, and says many people have told him the song prevented them from dying by suicide.
“Sadly, more people out there than we really want to admit have committed suicide or someone around us,” he says.
“I mean, Hell, right before I came here, I had to go to another funeral of the same situation. And it's more common than we really want to give credit to.”
Writing about mental health
While he is now a few years on from the release of Please Don’t Go, Flores doesn’t want to give his audience any illusions he has fully overcome his own mental health challenges.
In 2024, Flores released his latest album, Welcome to the Plains, which included another single focusing on emotional struggles: Oh Susannah. He released an accompanying music video for the song, which opens with a message from the musician: “I wrote this song about you. I hope y’all take care of yourselves.”
The video then shows a moment of Flores captured on stage in Kansas city, tears rolling down his cheeks as he addresses the crowd.
“This is the only thing that I’ve ever cared about and for some reason, I can’t figure out why I don’t feel a thing,” he says, his voice cracking.
Flores says the moment was a product of extreme stress brought on by the demands of touring and his own grandfather’s death by suicide in 2023.
“I just broke down in front of the fans because music was the only thing that I loved at that time. And ... that was my thing and for some reason it felt like music was rejecting me,” he explains.
Oh Susannah was an apology song in a way to his fans, explaining that while he cared for them, he couldn’t take on their experiences because he couldn’t take care of himself yet.
“Some of the fan interactions that I had, I didn't know how to process because a lot of them were telling me their stories of what they've gone through,” he says.
In the chorus of Oh Susannah, Flores declares: “Thought I was a saviour. But I was a fool on drunken behaviour. Why did I believe I could save you, darlin' Without killin' me?”
Now on the cusp of releasing his next album, Flores says he’s found ways to ground himself on tour without burning out emotionally.
“More than anything, it’s the people back home that I’m always away from, calling them, seeing how the cows are doing, ask my dad what he’s up to, seeing how mum’s job’s going,” he says.
“I mean, those simple things are what makes me remember that I'm not only White Flores, the artist on the Bucking Bin Chicken tour, but I'm also Wyatt Flores, the kid from Oklahoma that just grew up there.”
Still, he hasn’t evaded his demons completely.
While he says his songwriting on his new album focuses more wholly on relationships and heartbreak, he also recently revealed a single called Sleepless Lullaby that focuses on the continued experience of anxiety and depression he grapples with on the road.
Flores explains that even during his tour in Australia, he experienced an inexplicable panic attack before walking on stage in Melbourne.
In Sleepless Lullaby he wonders aloud: “Maybe I’m a fallen angel, maybe I’m my own worst enemy, maybe it’s something that runs deep in the blood of my family”.
Surge in popularity of country music
It’s this kind of genuine emotionality that Flores sees as the value of country music — and why audiences are turning to the genre at this moment in history.
In recent years, country music has seen a surge in popularity globally led by musicians like fellow Oklahama-born singer Zach Bryan. The genre has also become cemented in the mainstream by albums like Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, which won both Album of the Year and Best Country Album in 2025.
The rise in country music has been particularly prominent in Australia.
Research conducted by Connect by Live Nation published in July found Australia is now the third largest market for country music in the world, behind the US and Canada.
Australia saw a 746 per cent growth in tickets to country music gigs sold between 2019 and 2024.
Flores sees country as communicating a “truth” to audiences that other genres can’t match.
“There's a lot of great pop songs out there that we all love. Everyone loves pop music — that's why they call it pop music.
“But country just has this more sensibility of realness, in my opinion. And we're not scared to talk about it.”
If this story raised issues for you, help is available. Contact a crisis support service below.
- Lifeline 13 11 14 www.lifeline.org.au
- Beyond Blue 1300 224 636 www.beyondblue.org.au
- 13YARN 13 92 76 www.13yarn.org.au
- In an emergency, call 000
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