Cooper Alan has had a whirlwind few years, and has only gone up from there.
The country singer, 29, has made a name for himself online, where he boasts over 10M followers on TikTok, but what he’s most proud of is how he’s built a following for simply being his most authentic self.
Speaking exclusively with PEOPLE, the North Carolina native recalls how he first got bit by the entertainment bug when he started a cover band with some of his friends in eighth grade. “We played our first show and I was like, ‘This is so sick. There are 10 people here, and I’m having the best time of my life.’”
Eventually, Alan took the cover band to college as he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, playing everything from bars to fraternity parties. Though he was majoring in business at the time, it didn’t take him too long to realize he wanted to pursue music full-time.
“By the time I was a sophomore or junior, it was more than just a thing in the back of my head,” he looks back. “It was like, ‘No, I’m going to do this. I don’t really care about the internship thing or applying for any jobs. I’m going to do this. I’m going to try in school, play in my band and have a good time and move to Nashville when I’m done.’”
And that’s exactly what he did. Upon graduation in 2018, he packed up his bags and did what all aspiring country musicians do: try to get a record deal in Nashville. Though he tells PEOPLE he was fortunate to get a publishing deal early on with his mentor, songwriter Victoria Shaw, he quickly took a different path in getting a record label as the COVID pandemic hit in March 2020.
As TikTok began to blow up around that time, Alan saw the power of the social media app firsthand as he had his first viral video with his song “New Normal” in August 2020.
“The day we dropped it, it got 75,000 Spotify streams or something, which I hadn’t gotten more than 5,000 cumulative Spotify streams on any of my original songs,” he says. “So that was probably the moment where it was like, ‘Hey, this feels like more than just a silly app. This could maybe build something a little.’”
Reflecting on the impact TikTok has had on his career, he admits the app has “been everything” for him, notably pointing out how it’s allowed him to freely write and release music that’s authentic to who he is.
“Until 2020, there was no way for anybody to just get it out there and reach people. So I was one of those people that didn’t really have a whole lot going on in the fan-making department until TikTok,” he says. “So it was just kind of a leveling of the playing field and just letting fans kind of decide what they wanted to hear. And so it was a huge, huge blessing for me. And the fact that it led to real fans that wanted to listen to my music and see my shows and buy t-shirts and all that stuff is still pretty fricking crazy to think about. It feels normal now that we’re in it, but if you had told anybody that six years ago, they’d be like, you’re out of your mind.”
In fact, it’s given him so much freedom in his career, he was able to start his own record label Cooped Up Records in June 2021. “For me, just with the artist I am and what I like to do, it was kind of perfect for me just to be able to do whatever I was feeling, whatever fans were reacting to, not be put in a box quite yet,” he says of getting to be his own boss with his label. “We just had a lot of smart people around me be like, ‘Hey, a record deal’s great, but you don’t need one. You can keep doing what you’re doing.’”
Amid his blossoming career as a musician, one thing Alan knew he wanted to do was find a way to give back to his community. “I’d always wanted to do something, some sort of foundation to give back in some way, but I always kind of thought you needed to be X level of success to do so,” he admits.
Eventually, after an eye-opening phone call with his mom, he realized “the time is now,” and he quickly laid the groundwork for his Cooper Alan Foundation, which supports organizations that provide mental health services and resources.
“We chose mental health as the cause for the foundation [as it’s] something [that’s] always been near and dear to me,” he says, noting, “I’ve been doing therapy since college and especially since I’ve been in Nashville.”
“Just like athletes work on their game every day, musicians work on their music every day, you got to work on your mind every day,” he says of how he prioritizes his own mental health amid his busy schedule. “I’m extremely lucky to do what I get to do. I realize that I made the choice to do this. Nobody made me be a musician or get into this, but it can be a pretty anxiety inducing thing, just like anybody’s career, anybody’s life. Anybody can be proactive about their mental health and their mind. It affects everything in your life.”
The foundation officially kicked off in early February with a weekend event in Charlotte to benefit HopeWay, which Alan says raised over $400,000. And that number will continue to grow as proceeds from his new song “I Gotcha” and his upcoming tour, To The Bar Tour, will go towards the foundation.
After building such a solid community through social media, Alan says he’s eager to finally perform those songs live. “There’s nothing better,” he says of interacting with his fans in person. “It’s just been unbelievable getting out there, interacting with fans, hearing them sing songs, talk to ’em, hear their stories, meet some of ’em before the show. As somebody who got into this because I like performing and performing in bars was in my high, [getting] to perform my own songs instead of other people’s songs for an hour and a half instead of four and a half hours at a bar is really, really fun. And just, that’s the best part of it all.”
Looking ahead, Alan has a long list of career bucket list items he still wants to check off, from collaborating with fellow North Carolina country stars like Eric Church and Luke Combs to getting a nomination for CMA Entertainer of the Year, but his biggest at the moment is releasing his first full-length album, which he teases is due later this year.
With a lot of the songs already recorded, Alan notes the album will be “super country” with “powerful and important messages.” Plus, he has a few love songs throughout, noting one of his biggest inspirations has been his wife Hally Williams Cooper, whom he married in 2023.
“She is a rock, she is an inspiration,” he says of his college sweetheart. “Music is I guess what I do, but her and my family and our hopeful future family, that’s who I am. So she is a big inspiration in a lot of songs, at least the good ones.”
“I’m inspired by either things that I’ve been through or things that other people have been through, stories about people that I’ve heard or songs about family and the album touches on all of that,” he continues. “All I try to do is be authentic in what I do and hopefully that shows in the songs.”
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