Country singer/songwriter FILMORE moves with a maverick’s instincts: strong-minded, uncompromising, constantly pushing into uncharted territory. Since making history as the first independent artist featured on Spotify’s Hot Country cover, the Missouri-bred musician has repeatedly shattered the barriers between Country and Pop, long before that brand of genre-bending ruled the musical zeitgeist. In another groundbreaking leap for FILMORE, the Nashville-based phenomenon recently minted a deal with global icon Pitbull’s Mr. 305 Records, making him the rare Country act signed to a Latin record label. With his new album Atypical, FILMORE stacks every track with hard-hitting hooks and a bold mosaic of styles and sounds (Outlaw Country, Hard-Rock, Hip-Hop, Dancehall-Pop, and more). The result: a 21-song powerhouse built on his down-home poetry and daringly honest storytelling, equal parts high-octane thrill ride and unvarnished look at life and love.

 Not only a declaration of his belief in breaking boundaries, the title to Atypical calls back to a fan-beloved track from FILMORE’s 2016 debut project Proof. “There’s a line in the chorus to that song that says ‘Anything but typical,’ and over time I started meeting all these fans who’d tattooed those words on their wrists,” he explains. “It became my own personal motto, and it gave me the freedom to be 100 percent myself instead of chasing validation from other people. This album feels like a culmination of everything I’ve learned to this point, and it’s me at my most unfiltered.”

 His fourth studio album, Atypical marks FILMORE’s first full-length since signing with Mr. 305 Records—a turn of events set in motion soon after Pitbull’s team caught his explosive set at 2023’s Barefoot Country Music Fest. “Working with Pit has changed me in so many ways,” says FILMORE, who featured the GRAMMY-winning legend on his 2022 single “USA.” “It’s made me a better and more versatile writer, and helped me to become the best version of myself.” A first-generation American raised in a bilingual household thanks to his Colombian-born mother, FILMORE adds that the making of Atypical deepened his connection with his Latin heritage. “Growing up, my musical palette was scattered between my redneck dad listening to Country radio and my mom salsa-dancing in the kitchen,” he says. “Working on this album allowed me to tap into that part of my background like I never really had before, but in a way that felt completely true to me.”

 Although Atypical endlessly spotlights his stadium-ready star power—a quality he’s cultivated by headlining multiple tours, performing at major festivals like Stagecoach, and opening for superstars like Blake Shelton and Carrie Underwood—the album also signals a deliberate return to the DIY work ethic that guided FILMORE’s earliest days in music. To that end, he created most of the project in the home studio of his longtime collaborator John-Luke Carter and co-produced 16 of Atypical’s songs, working alongside in-demand producers like Zach Abend (HARDY, Nate Smith) and Justin Ebach (Tucker Wetmore, Warren Zeiders) and following his impulses in their purest form. “I wanted to go back to the way I started out, when I was just building up songs in a bedroom,” says FILMORE, who also co-wrote every track on Atypical. “Instead of worrying about a million different outside opinions, I just focused on making songs based on what I really love.”

 With its top-tier lineup of co-writers including the likes of Trannie Anderson (Lainey Wilson, Morgan Wallen) and Lindsay Rimes (Tim McGraw, Trace Adkins), Atypical opens on the potent beats, gritty riffs, and soulful steel tones of “Blame a Country Song”—a full-tilt celebration of Country music as the soundtrack to our most wildly carefree moments. As the very first piece written for the album, the feel-good but fiery anthem instantly became a touchstone for Atypical’s shapeshifting sound and unruly energy. “That song’s an ode to my upbringing and my country roots, but it’s definitely pushing the envelope as far as what’s happening sonically,” says FILMORE. “It set the tone for the whole album and felt like a perfect starting point—kind of like my way of telling everyone, ‘All right, buckle up. It’s only going to get crazier from here.”

 One of the most outrageously fun tracks on Atypical, “Yeehaw” finds FILMORE joining forces with Pitbull for a hot-blooded party song that merges Miami swagger with Nashville twang, arriving at a steamy Southern genre all its own. “Pit lives and breathes music and he’s always sending me ideas, and as soon as I got the voice memo for ‘Yeehaw’ I wanted to start working on it,” FILMORE recalls. “Everything came together really fast, and before I knew it I went down to Florida to finish it up. At first I didn’t know that Pit was going to add his vocals, and I remember watching him track his verse with a cowboy hat on and thinking, ‘This is super-sick and so surreal.’”

 An introspective songwriter who never shies away from speaking his truth, FILMORE turns reflective on tracks like “Love at First Fight”—an up-close portrait of a toxic romance, powered by stomping beats, searing guitar work, and a supremely moody vocal performance from the gravel-voiced artist. “I wrote that song about my last relationship before I met my wife, which I stayed in way longer than I should have,” he says. “I love how it starts out acoustic and then keeps building and building, the same way your emotions ramp up during a fight.” Meanwhile, on the hypnotic and heavy-hearted “Dark Side of Drinking,” FILMORE shares a deeply personal account of the way heartbreak reshapes your entire world. “I was in a relationship where we had such a blast partying together—but when it was over and I went out to the places we used to drink, I realized how different and empty it felt without her,” he says. “I wanted that song to feel like you’re sitting there in a smoky bar with me, with a guitar sound that feels like it’s coming out of an old jukebox.”

 Before closing out with the bittersweet balladry of “365” (a soul-searching pledge to live fully in the moment), Atypical offers up everything from the synth-driven reverie of “Reality” to the horn-laced Latin-Pop of “South On Me.” Whether he’s delivering a banjo-led acoustic tune like “Picture Perfect” or a breezy Country-Pop confection like “Breakup Tattoos,” FILMORE reveals the unstoppable spirit that’s fueled his musical journey from the start. Growing up in Wildwood, MO, he first discovered his vocal talents by singing in choir as a kid and later earned a scholarship to study vocal performance at the University of Missouri, where he further honed his chops by gigging at nearby colleges. After graduating, FILMORE headed to Nashville and briefly lived in his car, then teamed up with several friends and moved into a house that doubled as their studio. “It was a bunch of struggling musicians and videographers, sleeping on the floor or in bunk beds, just trying to make music,” he remembers. Tapping into his hustle mentality, he eventually landed a publishing deal and began opening for Country stars like Sam Hunt on tour. After selling his car to pay for his masters, FILMORE released Proof and scored a major hit with “Headlights”—a chart-climbing breakthrough that soon found him signing his first record deal and making his full-length debut with State I’m In, a 2020 project featuring massive hits like “Nothing’s Better.”

 After releasing his 2023 album Mean Something, FILMORE stepped back from the spotlight to start a family, ultimately returning to the studio with a profoundly heightened clarity on his musical vision. “The past year has been so eye-opening for me, and I feel like I'm locked in on the direction I want to keep moving in from now on,” he says. “I’m not trying to fit into any type of mold, but I’m also not trying to be different just for the sake of being different. I just want to be unapologetically myself, and bring in every kind of music that’s influenced me over the years. If you want to know who I really am as an artist, then this album will tell you everything.”