Why Does Eric Church Always Wear Sunglasses on Stage?
Turns out, the country star's signature look has nothing to do with fashion.
Between Reba McEntire's moving tribute to Loretta Lynn and Patsy Cline and Eric Church's touching performance at NBC's Opry 100: A Live Celebration, tears were flowing in Nashville in honor of the country music institution's milestone anniversary.
Not only was the impressive lineup of performances beyond memorable, so was the fashion. Notably, Church wore his signature look at the live event: sunglasses.
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So why exactly was Church wearing sunglasses on stage at the Opry? Turns out, the reason really has nothing to do with fashion at all.
Why does Eric Church always wear sunglasses on stage?
The country singer has explained that his decision to wear dark sunglasses on stage is simply to protect his eyes because they are sensitive to light.
"I wear contacts and my eyes don’t do real well with lubrication, but we would play all these bars and clubs and the PAR can lights… I’m 6’3”, so they would bake my contacts and they’d fall off. So I ended up being blind on stage," Church said in an interview with AXS TV. "Someone suggested glasses, and it worked. What’s funny is it stuck. It was never thought out. We never thought, 'This would be good.' We actually at the time thought this is not good… but it ended up being a thing."
Church also told CMT he only really wears sunglasses when he's performing. "If I’m not playing shows, I usually don’t wear them," he said. "But my eyes don’t do real well in lights. So if I’m playing shows, I’ll have shades on. It doesn’t feel right if I don’t."
Church even paid tribute to his now-iconic look in his 2022 song "Through My Ray-Bans."
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Eric Church wore sunglasses when he performed at NBC's Opry 100th anniversary special
When Church took the stage at Opry 100: A Live Celebration on March 19, he was unsurprisingly wearing a dark pair of sunglasses as he performed a moving tribute to the mass shooting victims of the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in 2017. “I played the Opry stage after playing the festival in Las Vegas, and I did not want to be here,” he said, adding that he feels the Opry and country fans helped “[repair] a piece of my heart that night.”
Folks in the audience and country fans watching home were all moved to tears during his performance of "Why Not Me," which received a standing ovation. "Incredibly powerful song," one fan tweeted, while another said, "This always gets me in the feels."
Church performed his song "Why Not Me" previously at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in October 2017. "The only way I've ever fixed anything that's been broken in me is with music," he said at the time. "So I wrote a song."
