Don’t be fooled by the combination of baby‑face innocence and “old soul” musical instincts—Ty Myers can command any stage with Texas‑football‑level swagger. He’s already earned that right.
Myers has been sharpening his songwriting skills since before the age of 10, which helps explain why his mature, soulful lyrics have already drawn comparisons to icons like John Mayer. At 18, he’s just dropped a new album, Heavy on the Soul, a highly anticipated follow‑up to his gold‑certified debut, The Select, which featured the platinum‑selling “Ends of the Earth.”
His music has already surpassed a billion streams, another line on a young résumé deeper than many veteran artists. What looks like pure prodigy‑level talent might seem like the obvious explanation for his near‑overnight rise, but ask Myers why things took off so fast and he might just point to the scarred, once‑calcified knee he wrecked on the Texas gridiron as the true catalyst for his faster‑than‑expected country career.
And for the young athlete who grew up near Austin—home of the Texas Longhorns—he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“It’s such a culture here, that even if you’re not expected to play professionally, it’s just a way of life,” Myers says. “In Texas, there’s just two types of guys: People who play football and people who don’t play football.”
You could say the former high school defensive back left it all on the field before he started leaving young female fans swooning—and having critics label him the “next face of country music.” Myers chased down a receiver for a touchdown‑saving tackle and shredded nearly every ligament in his knee. The moment abruptly ended his football days, but it instantly changed the trajectory of what now looks like an inevitable rise to country stardom.
Even for the “Thought It Was Love” singer, the speed of his success was a happy surprise.
“I knew my whole life this is what I wanted to do,” he says. “The only thing was, I didn’t expect it to happen that early. But in a way, I’m so glad it did.”
Surgery, hyperbaric therapy, and nearly 12 months of rehab brought his knee back to almost 100 percent. While the two‑sport athlete was mentally preparing himself for never stepping on a football or baseball field again, he—and his family—were already two-steps ahead when it came to pivoting to his next chapter. His mother helped him start a TikTok account, and soon his video for his song “Tie That Binds” became a viral smash. The surge in social media popularity led to label calls, and suddenly future college plans gave way to a packed concert schedule.
“My plan was to go to Belmont in Nashville, so I could maybe shave off years of grinding on Music Row,” he says. “But then, thankfully and luckily, this kind of fell into our lap.”
Today, the teenage Texan whose bedroom was once a shrine to both fastballs and fast guitar licks—Nolan Ryan in a Rangers uniform on one wall and guitar icon Stevie Ray Vaughan on another—has successfully swapped shoulder pads for a six‑string. Recently, he played the halftime show at the UFL’s Dallas Renegades home opener. “I was so pumped when that offer came through,” he says. “I just like to watch football, and I get to do it as part of my job now.”
Now Myers is gearing up for a pair of simultaneous summer tours. For the first time, he’ll hit the road on his own U.S. headlining run while also stepping into a support role behind one of his idols, Luke Combs, on a massive stadium tour. There, he’ll get a different taste of his football fandom as he takes over stages on some of the sport’s most sacred fields, including Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Lambeau Field, home of the Green Bay Packers.
He still maintains ties to his football roots, using his old program as a loose template for the strength side of his training. But his conditioning goals are now very different from chasing down receivers. Heavy squats and power cleans have been replaced by traininb that prepares him to cover Combs’ extra‑large stage and still belt out each encore with the same energy he had on the opening song.
“It’s not CrossFit, but it’s a lot of endurance‑type workouts because you’re singing and running around,” he says. “Luke’s stage is huge. It has four mics, so you have to run around during your set and sing, which is a constant workout on the lungs.”
Rehab, Hyperbaric Therapy, and a New Life Direction
In just three years since his viral music moment, pop culture pundits have been heaping nonstop praise on Ty Myers, calling him a “generational talent,” an “undeniable talent” with a voice that “has a weary scrape beyond his years.”
And while songs like “Drinkin’ Alone” and “Thought It Was Love”—each with over 100 million streams on Spotify—showcase his musical maturity, Myers is still an 18-year-old at heart who may be just as happy turning his buddies’ stomachs as he is pulling at the heartstrings of some of his fans. All he has to do is pull out the post-op pics of his damaged knee. “After they did the surgery, they send you pictures of the inside of your knee while they were working on it,” he says. “I still have them on my phone if I want to gross my friends out.”
As if the pain of that moment weren’t enough, the uploaded images are a permanent reminder of Myers’ final snap on the field. As a sophomore safety, he took an angle and chased down a wide receiver from nearly 30 yards out. The fundamentals were as precise and as well practiced as possible: Myers ran him down, wrapped up, and made the tackle. But as both players went to the ground, the receiver landed awkwardly on him, causing Myers’ knee to buckle inward.
“It was the worst pain for like a minute or two, but then your adrenaline kicks in,” he recalls. “I stood up and was able to walk in a straight line. It was the lateral movement that was impossible. But I started to jog off the field.”
Even with the agony and the strong possibility of severe knee damage, the Texan still held out hope he’d return to the game. Helmet in hand, he says he stood behind his coach until, he says, the coach saved him from himself. “After about a minute, [Coach] goes, ‘What are you doing?’ I said I figured I was gonna go back in the game,” he recalls. “Then he told me to go see the trainer.” Once he headed to the trainer, the severity quickly became clear. Then reality hit in an excruciating way. “The pain hit me like a ton of bricks,” he says. “It was always bad. I took some Advil that didn’t work really at all, and then my knee swelled.”
MRIs revealed a torn ACL, MCL, meniscus, as well as damage to the posterolateral corner of the knee (PLC). For NFL athletes, that kind of injury typically requires surgery and up to a year of rehab and recovery. For Myers, doctors initially held off on immediate surgery and instead started him on hyperbaric oxygen therapy—a treatment that delivers increased oxygen to damaged tissue to help reduce swelling and promote healing.
“I was 15, and questioning whether putting me in a tube with oxygen would work,” he says. “You put headphones on, you watch a movie, and they just pump excess amounts of oxygen in there for about an hour and a half twice a week. In about four weeks my meniscus completely healed.”
Surgery on the torn ligaments followed, but that was only the beginning of Myers’ road to recovery. The operation left his quad and hamstring on the injured leg grossly smaller and distorted from calcification. Regaining strength and range of motion became the priority. Most of the work, he says, focused on stretching-based exercises. “I did so much stretching… when [the muscles] calcify, they tighten up, and they don’t allow you to extend your leg, so you just have to stretch it out, get your muscles back.”
Two-a-Days Have Turned Into Heavy Touring Days
It seems that no matter which direction Ty Myers turns, football finds a way to follow him. On a recent episode of ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show—while the host and former NFL punter was announcing Myers’ UFL halftime appearance—McAfee inadvertently referred to Ty as “TV Myers,” which drew an even more uproarious laughter in the studio than usual.
Myers’ friends caught wind of the football faux pas, which meant the singer couldn’t catch a break that day. “All of my buddies—I couldn’t get away from it,” he says, laughing. “I was meeting one of my buddies in L.A. and all I hear from across the street was, ‘TV Myers! Is that you?’ I was like, ‘Oh God.’ But I was belly laughing when I heard it. It was hilarious.”
Even with fast fame, Myers hasn’t lost the ability to laugh at himself, but just like some of his song lyrics—including the “Me Neither” words You can call me A man who’s in love or just the remnants of The man I was before I knew about you—performance is serious business. On the road, he’ll often scope out hotels with a decent gym, especially in big cities. When a weightroom isn’t nearby, he relies on the equipment he brings with him on the bus. “Recently, we’ve actually started carrying weights, dumbbells and kettlebells in the trailer with us,” he says. “So if there’s not a gym that we can go to nearby, we’ll still get a workout in.”
He also keeps some semblance of his old football training in his routine. “I tend to do a lot of workouts that I was doing back then, which is a lot of lifting,” he says. He generally follows a body-part split, alternating between lighter and heavier days.
He’s also incorporated more bodyweight work, including calisthenics and pullups. Another addition has been light running, once or twice a week. He says that while the conditioning is crucial, the mental reset a run gives him helps both onstage and in the creative process. “I’m not a huge runner, but running for me has become more of a mindful thing,” he says. “It kind of breaks me down in a good way.”
His knee is now close to 100 percent, but to prevent another major injury, he’s come to rely on stretching as a training non‑negotiable. “I definitely stretch more,” he says. “I use some of the workouts to work small muscles, because that’s also a lot of what it was attacking—using muscles that you don’t usually use anymore. Obviously, I don’t want to do it again, so I work with that as much as possible.”
The goal of all this preparation is simple: Getting ready for both his 33-night summer headlining “Legal Tour” and his supporting role on Luke Combs’ current stadium tour requires Myers to maintain the physical ability to put on a high‑energy, full‑throttle show without getting gassed. He’s taking no chances. “The endurance part of workout is definitely, probably the most important to this actual stage and performing,” he says.
In 2025 Myers performed in front of his hometown crowed at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium, and now several years removed from his career-ending knee injury, he gets the chance to perform on some of the most iconic football fields throughout the country in a different kind of uniform. Still, trading the gridiron for the stage brings the occasional lighthearted reflection on what it might’ve been like roaming the defensive secondary in front of Notre Dame’s Touchdown Jesus if it weren’t for his injury. Now he uses that knee—and its full recovery—as a Texas football badge of honor.
“I could’ve gone to the league if I didn’t tear my knee,” he says, laughing. “I definitely make that joke with my friends all the time.”
