Mitchell Tenpenny’s Dual No. 1 Country Hits in 2022 Uphold a Family Legacy Started by the Matriarch of Music Row
Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The most famous “family tradition” in country music would have to be the intergenerational legacy of the Hank Williams clan. Right now, though, there’s another scion of Nashville royalty making good as a third-generation success: singer-songwriter Mitchell Tenpenny, who made modern chart history by managed to have two different No. 1 country airplay hits within the last month. But the rhetorical questions made famous by Hank Jr. — “Why do you drink? Why do you roll smoke?” — don’t apply in this case, as Tenpenny’s forebears in the business are a pair of strong but morally upstanding women: his grandmother, the late Donna Hilley, who capped a 31-year career at Sony/ATV Music Publishing by serving as CEO from 1994-2005, and his mother, Debbie Tenpenny, who currently works at Sony Music Publishing.