Feature image caption: Hayes holding his newly-gifted Book of Mormon. Image credit: Landon Pfile

Even stars have dark days.

Despite the shadow, Walker Hayes explains what’s kept his light from fading.

For a man who’s topped the charts with hits like “Fancy Like” and “AA,” Hayes’s success is far from how he would define himself. His identity lies with something greater — something Hayes deems “eternal.”

When Hayes visited BYU–Idaho this spring, he didn’t talk much about record deals, awards or tour buses.

He talked about being broken. About faith. About the daughter he lost — and the God he found.

Hayes sat down for a candid, in-depth interview with BYU–Idaho Radio hosts Natalia Hepworth and Landon Pfile, who invited him to share his story.

For Hayes, it became an opportunity to bear testimony to truth and expound upon the underlying experiences that make him unique: beneath the fame is a man learning to hold success loosely and God tightly.

“Some of the worst things that have happened to me,” Hayes said, “are the biggest hugs I’ve ever received from God.”

Born in Mobile, Alabama, Hayes studied music at Birmingham-Southern College and later attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2005, he and his high school sweetheart — now wife — Laney, moved to Nashville with nothing but hope and a dream.

Hayes worked at Costco by day and wrote songs at night, enduring more than a decade of near-misses and industry rejections.

Hayes was signed.

Then dropped.

Then signed again.

For years, music barely paid the bills, but Hayes learned how to fight for what mattered most.

“I’ve lived through a few things I wouldn’t wish on anybody,” Hayes said. “But the worst days were often the ones God used to draw me closer.”

Once Hayes became a father, his outlook adopted a more mature perspective. Success was no longer about stardom — it was about stewardship. It wasn’t about fame, but financial stability.

“When I had a kid, all of a sudden, my motivation behind chasing my dreams became a more healthy pursuance,” Hayes said. “I prayed, ‘Please let my desires and the talents You’ve given me take care of my wife and daughter.’”

Hayes and Laney have six living children. Their seventh, Oakleigh, died shortly after birth in 2018 — a loss Hayes called the most painful moment of his life.

That night, after the funeral, Hayes drove to a bar.

“I wanted to get in a fight. I wanted to self-destruct,” Hayes said. “I was two years sober.”

But upon arriving back home, Hayes saw his reflection in the glass door. Behind it, his wife sat alone on the couch — a poetic piece of imagery equipped with the power Hayes needed to unlock the gate of healthy introspection.

“I realized — I was about to make it all about me.”

That moment, he said, was one of the clearest confirmations of grace he’s ever experienced.

Instead of walking away from faith, Hayes leaned on it.

“God didn’t just give us ‘Fancy Like,’” Hayes said. “He protected the eternal things.”

Ironically, Hayes’s greatest success came just after one of his greatest sorrows. Released in 2021, “Fancy Like” shot to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart and went multi-platinum. But Hayes was still grieving the loss of his daughter — and his father, who died around the same time.

“There’s never a complete understanding of the Lord’s ways,” Hayes said. “But that’s OK.”

Hayes told BYU–Idaho Radio that vulnerability has become the soul of his songwriting. The upbeat tracks may get the clicks, but it’s the honest ones like “Briefcase,” about his strained relationship with his dad, that connect most deeply.

“Every time something connected, I was scared to put it out,” Hayes said. “There was always vulnerability in it.”

Hayes encouraged aspiring creatives not to chase pure success, but to chase purpose.

“Every song you’ve heard of mine that worked — I was having fun when I made it,” he said.

Still, Hayes’s success hasn’t changed his central priorities. Today, he values connection more than chart positions.

“I crave friendship now,” Hayes said. “I crave family.”

Hayes described music not just as entertainment, but as a spiritual language — one he believes was designed by God.

“Music is the most insane language God gave us to speak,” Hayes said. “Vibrations that make us feel things — it’s wild.”

But in Hayes’s faith journey, he’s not the hero of the story.

“If I have a relationship with God,” he said, “it’s not because I worked hard. It’s all Him. He gets all the glory.”

The interview ended with solemn reflection.

Numbers, money, status and fame are praised by much of the world, but Hayes is praising something else.

“Only the Lord can satisfy the deepest longings of the heart,” Hayes said.

Walker Hayes didn’t come to BYU–Idaho to prove anything. He came to tell the truth — that even stars have dark days. And that light won’t burn out when it’s fueled by the grace of God.