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Boyd Tyrone Herndon (born May 2, 1962) is an American country music singer and songwriter. His music career began in the 1980s as a member of the Tennessee River Boys, a predecessor to the country band Diamond Rio. Herndon quit the band early on and gained his first national exposure as a competitor on Star Search. He then played at various in Texas. After signing to Epic Records in 1993, Herndon made his debut in 1995 with his single, "What Mattered Most", which charted at number one on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. This was followed that same year by the release of his first album, also titled What Mattered Most.
Herndon released three more studio albums and a compilation for Epic: Living in a Moment (1996), Big Hopes (1998), Steam (1999), and (2002). He recorded a Christmas album in 2002 before a recording hiatus. He returned with his fifth studio album, Right About Now (2007) for the Titan Pyramid label; his sixth studio release, Journey On, followed in 2010. Herndon has charted a total of 17 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. This figure includes three number-ones: "What Mattered Most", "Living in a Moment" and "It Must Be Love". His singles "I Want My Goodbye Back", "Loved Too Much", "A Man Holdin' On (To a Woman Lettin' Go)", and "Hands of a Working Man" all made top ten on the same chart.
Herndon gained further media attention in 2014 after he coming out as gay, becoming the first mainstream male country music singer to do so. His personal life has been the subject of mainstream media for other reasons, including his struggles with drug addiction and mental health. His musical style is defined by his singing voice and an emphasis on ballads.
Shortly after graduating from Austin High School in Decatur, Alabama, Herndon moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in country music. At this point he also attended Belmont University. Herndon's first major role came in 1983 when he became lead vocalist of the Tennessee River Boys, a group that performed at the Opryland USA theme park in Nashville. This band was originally intended to perform a one-time show to promote the park, but became one of several regular performers there. Herndon left the band after only a year to become a contestant on the television talent show Star Search. Following Herndon's departure, the Tennessee River Boys underwent a number of membership changes and became Diamond Rio. When his tenure on Star Search proved commercially unsuccessful, Herndon attempted to secure a recording contract in Nashville. He told The Tennessean in 1995 that multiple labels rejected him as they considered him a "pretty boy". Despite this, he found work singing for Pepsi and Dodge, as well as demo tracks for other artists. He lost a significant amount of money due to an unfavorable management deal, which led to his mother having to sell her house to refinance the amount of money lost. In addition, Herndon's father died of a brain hemorrhage, putting further strain on both him and his family.
Herndon then moved to Texas and found work performing in various across the state, to regain some of the money he had lost. His tenure in Texas included a stint with Louise Mandrell in 1987 at Billy Bob's Texas, a country music nightclub in Fort Worth. He competed on another television talent show titled You Write the Songs in 1987, but was unsuccessful. Herndon also appeared on The Porter Wagoner Show, a musical variety show hosted by country singer Porter Wagoner. By 1989 he had formed a backing band called Bayou. This act opened for Little Texas in 1989 prior to that band's signing with Warner Records. In 1993, Herndon won a local music award called Texas Entertainer of the Year. At the awards ceremony, Herndon was discovered by a representative of Epic Records, and he signed with the label later in the year.
The album featured backing vocals from several artists on Epic or sister label Columbia Records, including Patty Loveless, Joe Diffie, Ron Wallace, and Gibson/Miller Band member Blue Miller. Doug Johnson, then the vice-president of artists and repertoire (A&R) of Epic's Nashville branch, produced the album and co-wrote "I Want My Goodbye Back". In addition to the singles, What Mattered Most included a cover of Jim Croce's "You Don't Mess Around with Jim". Another track, the Vince Gill and Don Schlitz composition "You Just Get One", was later recorded by Jeff Wood on his 1997 album Between the Earth and the Stars. Wood's rendition charted on Hot Country Songs that same year.Whitburn 2017, p. 405 "Heart Half Empty" later appeared on Bentley's 1996 album Hopechest, also issued on Epic. The music video for "What Mattered Most" was aired on CMT and the former TNN (The Nashville Network). Herndon promoted the album further by starting a tour in 1995.
Michael McCall of New Country magazine rated the album three-and-a-half stars out of five, as he considered Herndon's vocal delivery "confident" but was more mixed toward the lyrical content of the songs. An uncredited review published by Billboard was favorable, stating, "With a rich, expressive voice that is equally suited to pensive ballads and rollicking, uptempo tunes, Herndon is one of country's most impressive newcomers." In early 1997, What Mattered Most was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of 500,000 copies. Executives of Sony Music Nashville, of which Epic was a division at the time, attributed the album's commercial success to a marketing strategy they employed at the time. Under this plan, albums by new artists were priced a dollar lower than the national average for sixty days after their release. These same executives also noted this strategy had been successful on albums by Wade Hayes and James House.
In 1999, Epic released his next studio album Steam. Herndon selected a new producer for this album, as he thought his previous albums did not reflect the energy of his live performances. He chose Joe Scaife because of that producer's work with K.T. Oslin, a 1980s country artist Herndon referred to as "one of his all-time favorites". Herndon selected the songs for the album by performing them in concert so he and Scaife could gauge the audience's reaction to each. In addition, Herndon recorded demos with his road band, which he then played for the album's to give them an idea of how he wanted each song to sound. Among the involved musicians were drummer Paul Leim, steel guitar player Dan Dugmore, and guitarist Chris Leuzinger of Garth Brooks' studio band The G-Men. The album also included a horn section fronted by Jim Horn, and a string section including members of the Nashville String Machine. "Steam", the album's title track, was also its lead single. It reached top twenty by the end of 1999, but was less successful than the lead singles of Herndon's previous albums. Two other singles, "No Mercy" and "A Love Like That", peaked even lower.
Also included on the album was a cover of Joe Cocker's "You Can Leave Your Hat On", which Herndon had sung in concert for many years prior. While not a single, the cover charted at number 72 on Hot Country Songs in 2000 due to unsolicited radio airplay. Herndon considered the album more "sexy" than his previous efforts, citing both this cover and the title track as examples. Dan MacIntosh of Country Standard Time considered Herndon "too darn polite" for such material, also criticizing the album for "by-the-numbers" arrangements. A more favorable review came from AllMusic, whose Maria Konicki Dinoia wrote, "With a new production team in tow, Herndon has played a bigger part in selecting the album's songs...and it's clear he sings from the heart, as he always has." Deborah Evans Price of Billboard found both "Steam" and "No Mercy" "equally sensuous" in a review of the latter.
Herndon's next album was Journey On, released on the independent FUNL label in 2010. The album featured mostly contemporary Christian music songs, all of which Herndon wrote or co-wrote over the span of six months. Herndon said that he did not intend for the album to be a Christian project, but found that as he was writing, many of the songs tended toward reflecting his "spiritual growth". He also said that he found the album "fun" because of how much control he had over assembling musicians and recording compared to his previous releases. The album was nominated at the 53rd Grammy Awards for Grammy Award for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album. "Journey On" was selected by American football player Kevin Turner as the theme song for his Kevin Turner Foundation. This foundation is dedicated to research of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's Disease, which Turner had been recently diagnosed with at the time. After Journey On, he released a non-album single titled "Stones", which was previously recorded for his unreleased Epic album in 2001. FUNL released the song to country radio without disclosing the artist's name, and held a contest with radio programmers to see if they could determine the singer.
His next album was 2016's House on Fire, which once again featured several songs he co-wrote. It was his first release on the BFD label, and he co-produced with Drew Davis and Erik Halbig, a guitarist in Herndon's road band. Herndon described the title track as autobiographical, while in comparison, "All Night Tonight" came from Davis and Halbig wanting to write a "beach song". This was followed in 2019 by Got It Covered, which featured re-recordings of his hit singles along with . Among the songs covered were Marc Cohn's "Walking in Memphis", Carrie Underwood's "So Small", and Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me". Herndon said that he had almost considered retiring from country music due to the lack of success of his last few albums until he heard "So Small" on the radio. When Underwood found that Herndon had covered the song, she spoke favorably about it on social media. In 2020, Herndon collaborated with Kristin Chenoweth and Paul Cardall on a single titled "Orphans of God".
Herndon's next single release was "Till You Get There" in June 2022 on Pivotal Records. This was the lead single to his next studio album Jacob, released one month later. It included more songs that Herndon had written about his personal life. Country musicians Terri Clark, Emily West, and Shelly Fairchild provided guest vocals on individual tracks, as did jazz singer Wendy Moten. Herndon told Spin that the album's title came from the account of Jacob wrestling with the angel in the Book of Genesis. This was followed in late 2022 by another single titled "God or the Gun", which was accompanied by a music video. The third single from the project was "Dents on a Chevy", a duet with Terri Clark.
Herndon signed a three-album deal with the independent Club44 record label in June 2025. His first project for the label will be a compilation titled Thirty, which will include re-recordings of his hit singles. The first such re-recording to be released was of "What Mattered Most" with LeAnn Rimes as a duet partner.
The lyrical content of his Epic albums was met with mixed reception. Michael McCall of New Country found some of the tracks on What Mattered Most "shallow", such as "In Your Face" and "Heart Half Empty". Both Entertainment Weekly and AllMusic panned Living in a Moment for formulaic lyrics. In comparison, Herndon began writing songs in the 2010s; although he had not written previously, he thought that doing so would allow his albums to become more personal.
In 2002, Herndon underwent a series of personal setbacks. Early in the year, he was robbed at gunpoint in Los Angeles. He also had a lawsuit filed against him by a California dentist claiming that Herndon had not paid for emergency dental work and another lawsuit from a former manager for breach of contract. In addition, he relapsed into drug and alcohol addiction. This led to him experiencing depression and weight gain. After his friends noticed he had not left his apartment in several days, they flew him to Nashville, where he lived in his mother's basement for one month before re-entering rehabilitation. After completing this, he returned to performing in 2004. Herndon's addiction to methamphetamine resulted in a second relapse in 2020, at which point he was discovered in his apartment with both methamphetamine and Ambien in his possession. According to him, this was the result of trauma from his first experience with metamphetamines at age 20, at which point he was raped. This was an attempted suicide, and would later serve as the inspiration behind his song "God or the Gun". Herndon successfully underwent drug rehabilitation a second time in late 2020-early 2021. In addition to this, Herndon was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2021. In August 2022, Herndon began a podcast called Soundboard with Ty Herndon, in which he discusses his personal life and mental health. Guests on the podcast have included singers LeAnn Rimes and Michael Ray.
Herndon came out as gay in a 2014 interview with People magazine, thus becoming the first mainstream male country star to do so. He stated that he had been in a gay relationship for several years at this point, and that his ex-wife and several close family members already knew. Herndon was partnered with his boyfriend Matt Collum for eleven years before the two amicably separated in 2021. In relation to his coming out, Herndon re-issued "What Mattered Most" in June 2019 with the song's pronouns changed to reflect a gay relationship. This re-recording appeared on Got It Covered, and Herndon commented that he wished he could have recorded the song in that fashion at the time of its original release. Many of the songs on House on Fire, including the title track, are about the stigmas that Herndon felt he faced as a gay man in country music, typically a more conservative genre than most others. He also credited conversations with country singer Chely Wright, who came out as a lesbian in 2010, with giving him the confidence to come out. Another inspiration to Herndon was hearing Carrie Underwood's "So Small" on radio. Herndon's announcement preceded the coming out of several other gay musicians in the genre, such as Billy Gilman. Herndon noted that his fan base was largely supportive of him after his announcement. Herndon and Wright have performed together at benefit concerts for GLAAD on multiple occasions. In 2016, Herndon and CMT presenter Cody Alan founded the Concert for Love and Acceptance, an annual concert to support LGBT youth in Nashville. In February 2023, Herndon became engaged to Alex Schwartz, whom he had been dating for six months prior. They married on August 27, 2023.
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