Chris Cagle

Cagle first picked up a guitar at the age of six. By the time he was 19, he had dropped out of college and moved to Nashville, where he befriended famous songwriter Harlan Howard. Howard took him under his songwriting wing, and Cagle's resulting albums invoked the music he grew up on: country rock and Southern boogie rock (think Marshall Tucker and Charlie Daniels rather than the Eagles or Lynyrd Skynyrd). His first album, 2000's Play It Loud, fared well enough, producing the country chart hit "Laredo," but after a career stall, Cagle switched record labels. In 2003, he returned with Chris Cagle and made a huge splash with the humorous song "Chicks Dig It." With a rousing intro of, "Hey y'all, watch this," "Chicks Dig It" was an instant hit on the country charts, and Cagle's career seemed back on track. The year 2005 saw the release of Anywhere But Here, and in 2008 he released My Life's Been a Country Song.