Luke Combs Apologizes for Previously Using Confederate Flag Imagery

Luke Combs is issuing an apology.

The 30-year-old country star made an appearance in a Country Radio Seminar event on Wednesday (February 17) in a panel with moderator Ann Powers and participant Maren Morris, in which they discussed Morgan Wallen‘s recent racial slur controversy.

Luke pointed out that he used to use Confederate flags in previous imagery in his career.

“There is no excuse for those images. I think, as a younger man, that was an image that I associated to mean something else. And as I’ve grown in my time as an artist, and as the world has changed drastically in the last five to seven years [when the images were created], I am now aware how painful that image can be to someone else…I would never want to be associated with something that brings so much hurt to someone else,” he said.

“I’m here to learn. I feel like I’m at this highly successful moment of my career, and I couldn’t just sit back and not do anything. I couldn’t not say, ‘Hey, I want people to know that we, as a genre, care about this issue.’”

A TV star also just apologized for wearing a jacket with the flag.