Meet Tayler Holder, The Most Followed Country Singer On TikTok

Who is Tayler Holder? Well, he is the most followed country singer on TikTok with over 20 million followers, surpassing the likes of Morgan Wallen (4.2 million) and Carrie Underwood (2 million).

Additionally, Holder, who was recently named CMT’s Next Up Now Artist, has over 5 million Instagram and 149k facebook followers. He is also a member of TikTok collective Hype House.

Growing up in a small town in Texas, the rising country artist grew up a sports junkie and instrumentalist, taking up guitar at 12-years-old and later piano, drums and saxophone and teaching himself to by watching videos on YouTube. He rose to TikTok fame with short lip-syncing videos, collaborating with other big-name influencers, before pivoting into music.

“Music was always the goal for me. It was always what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but I just ended up blowing up as an influencer first. Surprisingly, that makes the music stuff harder because you're thrown into the social media/influencer realm. It's a blessing and a curse,” he told Forbes.

“Whenever I first blew up, I would say it was so slow at first. I had a million followers because it converted from my Musical.ly from back in the day. They were mostly dead followers. Because it was Musical.ly days, and I was getting like 5,000 views, not even likes, but views. I thought I was done with this. Then right after, I had my first viral video, and I was like, 'oh shit.' Okay. I had my own little content house, and we had many popping TikTokers there. We just kept collabing. Then it blew up so fast in the first year. I gained 10 million followers and saw the engagement like how powerful they were. That's when I knew this was going to be a huge impact on my whole career.”

Since moving to Nashville, he has made quite the mark within the country genre. His original song –It’s You – went viral on TikTok but a chance encounter with Dan + Shay’s Shay Mooney helped propel his music career even further. Holder was hanging out with Parker McCollum at CMA Fest, at which he joined fellow country artist Reyna Roberts on stage, when he unexpectedly ran into Mooney.

“It was pretty wild. I’ve looked up to Dan + Shay, and listened to their music my whole life,” Holder told Everything Nash. “It was before I lived here, and I was just talking and hanging out. He was like, ‘Tell me about it what’s going on with your music. I was like, ‘I’m looking to move out here. I just need to find people to write with. I don’t really know anybody out here.’ And he was like, ‘Dude, I would love to write something for you sometime.'”

The result was their collaboration in writing Drive – released in November 2022. It was also co-written with Daniel Ross, Benjy Davis, Simon Jay and Luke Shrestha.

Holder made his red carpet debut at the CMT Music Awards in April with his mother.

“It was an exhilarating time for me to see all the artists that I have looked up to and admired. I had such fun walking the carpet and connecting with the industry that I have built a relationship with, and it was very special for me to take my biggest supporter – my mother to such a lifelong memory,” Holder said in a press release. “I am so thankful to CMT for supporting me the way they have, and it makes me want to work harder to create music and perform better and better!”  

His latest musical offering is Marry You, based on Holder’s former romantic partner.

“When I first met this person, I totally fell for them,” Holder told PEOPLE of the song he wrote alongside CB30’s Christian and Brody Clementi. “Just everything about [this person] was everything that I wanted my partner to be, so I wrote this song about going through that process of meeting and hanging out — all these moments that would lead up to one day, you know, marrying this individual.

“I think we’ve decided we’re better friends from a distance. It’s always funny to talk about this now because I’m obviously single, looking for love every day of my life over here.”

As for what’s coming up, Holder says he has new music and shows in the works.

--------

Keep up to date with Tayler Holder and follow him on Facebook here.