John Shearer
Thomas Rhett
Thomas Rhett caught a lot of shade on Instagram when his wife, Most Beautiful alum Lauren Akins, posted a video of their third child’s gender reveal party. As daughters Willa Gray (3) and Ada James (2) looked on, the couple pulled the triggers on smoke cannons to reveal a cloud of pink mist. Rhett’s face seemingly fell when he learned that baby number three would be his third daughter.
“I got a bad rap for that video. I think people were like, ‘he’s not excited to have another girl,’” he says.
“What people don’t know is that my whole family was there, and we had all just made a bet. I was certain that it was a boy. I already had names picked out. So when I shot my cannon, my look of what people thought was, ‘I can’t believe we’re having a girl,’ was really just in fact, ‘I’ve just lost a gigantic bet!’”
He laughs at the memory, but emphasizes his point.
“The thing is, I’m a really good girl dad. I’ve gotten really good at it and I’m obsessed with my girls. I can’t wait to have a third. Willa Gray and Ada James are going to be amazing big sisters, and she’s going to learn a lot very quickly from them,” he says.
“But also, we’re not done yet. Lauren wants five kids. We would love to adopt again [Willa Gray was adopted from Uganda in 2017], so I think our family is going to be massive by the time we’re said and done with it. We’ve got another shot [at a boy].”
John Shearer
Thomas Rhett
But raising daughters isn’t easy. Rhett says that teaching his girls to be confident in themselves from a young age has been a big part of being a girl dad.
“That’s something Lauren and I have talked about quite a bit. Every night when I lay them down to go to sleep, I say, ‘You are beautiful, you are confident, you are strong, and you are loved more than you could ever imagine. I want you to know that and accept it and never let anybody tell you different.’”
“We try to instill in them a lot of confidence about themselves. I’m constantly going, ‘Willa Gray, you’re so beautiful. Ada James, you’re so beautiful.’ I just hope that they hear that from me enough that when they get into middle school and high school, they believe that about themselves.”
As for Rhett’s definition of beauty, he doesn’t have to look far.
John Shearer
Thomas Rhett
“My wife and kids are the most beautiful things in my life. My wife has been it for me since I was 15-years-old—whether she knew it or not,” he says of Lauren, whom he met in grade school and married in 2012.
“From 21 to 25 it was just us, but it’s truly amazing to watch your wife become a mother. Obviously, she’s beautiful inside and out, but to watch her be a mom, it’s a different planet.”
He also finds beauty in his job, especially in songwriting.
“There is something so amazing about being able to sit down with a couple of people and literally create something out of thin air that translates onto the radio and into fans singing it back to you onstage.”
And while his parenting style has been inherent, Rhett says his fashion style—onstage and off—has been a lifelong work in progress.
Spencer Combs
Thomas Rhett performs
“At three-years-old, I was in a diaper and cowboy boots; in sixth grade I was super into the Ramones and the Clash and a bunch of English punk rock music; then I was just like every other kid in high school in 2004, 2005—nothing but Abercrombie and Hollister,” he says.
And while he went back to his roots in the early days of his career, he soon realized that functional fashion was a must for the stage. In 2013, while touring with Jason Aldean, Rhett was coming into his own as a performer. But his classic country style became a hazard onstage when his snip toe cowboy boots got stuck on the metal stage night after night.
“I’ll never forget how scary it was; one night I was talking to the band and I was like, ‘I think I’m going to wear Chuck Taylors onstage. Do you think I’m going to get booed out of country music?”
Since then he’s been all about the streetwear at work, but at home, he keeps it simple. He favors flannel, work pants, and work boots.
“Onstage I try to push the boundaries as far I can go and not have people say, ‘Oh my gosh, what is he wearing up there?’ But at 29 years old, a lot of things got simpler for me. I wasn’t as concerned with a lot of the stuff I was from 21 to 28. I feel like I’ve come into the person that Thomas Rhett—at the core—genuinely is.”