Look Back at 29 Photos of Tim McGraw Young

At one point in Tim McGraw's life, he was reportedly so bad at playing guitar, his college roommates would hide his instrument from him so he couldn't play it.

He persevered, thankfully. On the day that his hero, Keith Whitley, died in 1989, McGraw was making the move to Nashville to pursue music as a career.

It wasn't easy, as it isn't for most up-and-comers, and his first few projects fell flat.

Still, he pushed on.

In 2024, McGraw will tell stories of having songwriters in Nashville where he would ask co-writers to bring a fire log and some Doritos, for heat and food. He had neither in his apartment. Slowly, things picked up — McGraw would go on to succeed in both music and acting, appearing in TV shows and nearly a dozen movies to date. The "One Bad Habit" star continues to release new music as one of country music's longest-running superstars.

In total, McGraw's sixteen studio albums have produced 65 singles, 25 of which have reached No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs or Country Airplay charts.

Take a walk back in time to before he was a megastar, with 30 photos of Tim McGraw in his younger days.