Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
“It feels like a honky tonk in here,” Luke Combs told the Austin City Limits Music Festival faithful Friday night at the American Express stage. Given the multitude of cowboy boots, hats and frilly white skirts, the 35-year-old singer wasn’t wrong.
“First country headliner, by the way,” he added, to loud applause.
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Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
George Strait, the Chicks, Willie Nelson and Chris Stapleton would like a word. No matter — we’ve reached pop music singularity at ACL. Genre is just fashion.
Picture, if you will: a young man in a Tupac T-shirt singing lovesick country ballad “One Number Away” by Luke Combs.
The 2017 track enjoyed a renaissance on TikTok thanks to lip-syncing hunks, the Montana Boys. In their viral videos, random celebrity guests would sing along to the same 15-second chorus with them. Like Kristen Cavallari. OK, but the song is dynamite, and the online attention doesn’t unlock without Combs’ foundational, dynamo chops.
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Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
Then there is his cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” a deeply personal 1988 missive from a Black singer. Combs has spoken openly about straight-up loving the song. So much so that he kept the original pronouns and the lyric about him working as a “checkout girl” at the grocery store out of respect.
Friday night at Zilker, Combs reveled in the long road to this stage. He mentioned living above a bar and writing “She Got the Best Of Me” as a younger man.
“I got into music because I love music… I never want to lose sight of that,” Combs said.
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His set was about breaking the fourth wall. His music is for anyone alive in 2025, and he never assumes genre tunnel vision or insults onlookers.
“These boys like all kinds of music,” he said of his band, as his keyboard player performed a biting Vanessa Carlton cover of “A Thousand Miles.”
The show was a retrospective. Combs mentioned his first tour in Texas, which he said coincided with when he began dating his now-wife. He spoke of spending his last $200 to master “Hurricane,” despite not really knowing what it meant to get a song mastered. (It means to take a finished song and give it a polished sonic veneer so that it sounds loud on the radio.)
“How the hell did we end up here?” Combs posited.
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Luke Combs performs at ACL Fest in Zilker Park on Friday, Oct. 3, 2025.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
The North Carolina singer was also toasting the Friday release of his new three-song EP, which dared to coincide with Taylor Swift’s new album launch. The occasion made him jittery.
“Gosh, it’s crazy. I just feel like it’s the first time I put music out in quite some time, and I am nervous about it. I’m nervous to see what you guys will think about it,” he said on Instagram, as Country Now flagged.
New cut “Days Like These” sparkled; it was a vulnerable, acoustic ballad about gratitude.
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That’s the key to Combs’ appeal. He doesn’t hide behind pyrotechnics, though yes, there were onstage fireballs. He’s an optimistic populist. One who likes “’Whiskey River’ on the jukebox” and still believes in a thing called love.
“They say nothing lasts forever but they ain’t seen us together,” he opines on “Forever After All.”
You believe him every time.
