From a Washington Post story by Emily Yahr headlined “Chris Stapleton’s unexpected journey to sing the Super Bowl national anthem”:

About 10 years ago, singer-songwriter Chris Stapleton stood in a parking lot outside a Nashville restaurant with label executive Brian Wright. The two longtime friends had just met for lunch after Wright sat through a long morning of meetings where every single song that was pitched to him sounded exactly the same, many extolling the virtues of cold beers and dirt roads.