Review: Country superstar Luke Combs delivers big time with ballads and barroom romps at the Vikings stadium

The burly, bearded dude with a ballcap probably could have entered U.S. Bank Stadium on Saturday via a ticket gate and gone unnoticed. Because Luke Combs looks like EveryCountryMusicDude. Except he arrived through the "stage door" because he's the two-time reigning CMA entertainer of the year who has scored 15 consecutive No. 1 country songs.

Coming through the "performers" door enabled Combs to make a Minnesota entrance in front of 60,000 people. After a recording of Prince's "Purple Rain" was broadcast in the darkened stadium, Combs appeared on big video screens walking through a purple locker room wearing a Vikings ballcap. When he arrived onstage with a blue Solo cup in hand, he punted the cup and tore into "Lovin' on You." The singer paraded down a runway, mimed a guitar solo, punched the air. That was about as aggressive as he got all night. (Except when he crushed a beer cup.)

Combs, 33, doesn't have the hyper energy of Kenny Chesney, the menacing intensity of Eric Church or the booty shaking of Luke Bryan. Combs' main stage move was pacing back and forth like a football coach on the sidelines. Instead of a play sheet, Combs had a nearly omnipresent blue Solo cup in hand. Still, he came away an unqualified winner.

For two hours, the North Carolina native and his seven musicians were essentially a bar band playing in a stadium with no major concessions to being in a stadium. No props or pyro, no satellite stage out in the crowd. Just an opening video recapping Combs' life story (with audio unfortunately garbled by the stadium's acoustics), giant video screens, a Y-shaped runway and Combs shotgunning a beer (which was preceded by a skol chant led by his employee Andrew, a big Vikings fan wearing a Justin Jefferson jersey).

This entertainer of the year is about good songs, a good voice, a little bit of love and a lot of cold beer, all sewn together with unadulterated authenticity.

Combs has a more robust voice than other men in modern country music, even more full-bodied than Garth Brooks. On rockin' choruses Saturday, he had a distinctive delivery that was half bark and half belt. There was even a growl mixed in on "Doin' This."

His songs sound classic, not contemporary, more Merle Haggard than Morgan Wallen. At the Vikings stadium, Combs slayed guys with barroom romps and got women to swoon with his romantic ballads.

Of the four opening acts in the too-long marathon, one mattered the most — Lainey Wilson, who on Thursday won Academy of Country Music's album of the year for "Bell Bottom Country," after last fall's CMA awards for best new artist and top female vocalist.

The 30-year-old from Louisiana, who plays a role on the "Yellowstone" TV series, was a breath of fresh air, telling the massive crowd that she offers "country with a flair. It's about what makes you different. It could be the way you talk or the way you dress or not giving a rat's ass about what anybody says. You hear me, girls?"

Then the kinetic singer backed up the talk with empowering tunes such as "Watermelon Moonshine" about making love for the first time right after high school graduation, under the influence of moonshine from a Mason jar. In "Rolling Stone," she declared she's wild and free so "don't give a rock to a rolling stone." And in her only No. 1 song, "Things a Man Oughta Know," she told him all the so-called manly things she could do, including "how to keep it hidden when a heart gets broke."

Wilson teared up thanking the crowd for her recent hot streak before she did a medley of "Wait in the Truck," her hit duet with Hardy about domestic abuse, and her own "Heart Like a Truck" about being tough but lovable. She clearly was both.