"It's a very smart, progressive bunch, these people that make country music," Brad Paisley told the Guardian in 2010. "They're not country hicks sitting behind a desk with a big cigar giving out record deals and driving round in Cadillacs with cattle horns on the front grille: it's a bunch of really wonderful, open-minded, great people down on Music Row that make this music."

And Paisley himself is head honcho amongst this new breed of Nashville sophisticates. Almost twenty years and 12 million album sales into one of the most glittering careers in modern country music, he’s one of the few country stars standing up for progressiveness rather than playing to the Tea Party heartlands – even as a self-proclaimed “apolitical” singer, he celebrated Obama’s Presidential term with a song called ‘Welcome To The Future’ tackling the history of racism in the south, and played at the White House. He’s also broken out of the country niche to win over the Billboard charts – five of his eleven studio albums have reached the Billboard Number Two – and become one of the few US country stars to break into the UK Top 40. But how did this Stetson’d heartthrob get here? Here’s all you need to know.

What’s Brad Paisley’s age and history?

Born on October 28, 1972 (he’s 44) Paisley was raised in Glen Dale, West Virginia, where his grandfather bought him his first guitar and taught him to play at the age of eight. "Pretty soon, I was performing at every Christmas party and Mother's Day event,” he said. “The neat thing about a small town is that when you want to be an artist, by golly, they'll make you one."

At 13 he formed his first band Brad Paisley And The C-Notes and wrote his first song ‘Born On Christmas Day’, which made him even more of a Glen Dale celebrity as he played it at local Rotary Club events and landed himself a regular gig on a West Virginia radio station. He graced the airwaves weekly for eight years, until his studies took him to his spiritual home of Nashville and the rest of America got to sample his talents. Hooking up with his future songwriting partners at Belmont University, Paisley was signed to EMI Music Publishing within a week of graduation and had his first single ‘Who Needs Pictures’ released on Arista Nashville by February 1999.

The next eighteen years were like a bronco-bucking rocket ride. His first album ‘Who Needs Pictures’ went platinum, spawned two US Country Number Ones and garnered Paisley his first of many Grammy nominations. By his second album ‘Part II’ he was luring the likes of Jerry Springer to make a guest appearance in the video for his breakthrough novelty hit ‘I’m Gonna Miss Her (The Fishing Song)’ – about his partner giving him a fishing-or-me ultimatum; he picks fishing – and by third album ‘Mud On The Tires’ in 2003 he was getting product placement sponsorship from Chevrolet to mention them in the Number One title track and the likes of Jason Alexander, James Belushi and William Shatner were cropping up in the promo for ‘Celebrity’, spoofing American Idol, Fear Factor and The Bachelorette.

Come 2005’s ‘Time Well Wasted’ he was singing with the legendary Dolly Parton, by 2007’s ‘5^th Gear’ he was collecting his first Grammy and in 2009 he broke records with his tenth Billboard country Number One in a row. How big was Brad Paisley? Taylor Swift was supporting him.

What’s Brad Paisley’s biggest song?

2011’s self-explanatory ‘This Is Country Music’ featured a host of collaborations with stars such as Don Henley, Sheryl Crow and a whistling Clint Eastwood (no, really). But the album’s biggest hit was the Carrie Underwood duet ‘Remind Me’, a raunchy epic which hit Number 17 on the Billboard Hot 100, Paisley’s biggest mainstream hit to date. It racked up over 71 million views on Youtube and helped keep Paisley firmly in the public eye for the rest of the early ‘10s. Subsequent albums tackled more socially conscious topics such as xenophobia, spousal abuse, social justice, southern racism and religion as Paisley matured into his more established country lynchpin role.

What was the controversy over ‘Accidental Racist?’

Paisley ran into controversy over the song ‘Accidental Racist’ from 2013’s ‘Wheelhouse’ album, with critics taking issue with guest artist LL Cool J rapping lines such as “If you don't judge my gold chains, I'll forget the iron chains” and the song’s attempt to reappropriate the Confederate flag. Yup, Brad, too soon…

How did he get to ‘Today’?

‘Today’ is the life-affirming hit from Paisley’s most recent album ‘Love And War’, a record featuring major glitterati guest spots from Timbaland, John Fogerty, Bill Anderson and Mick Jagger – his collaboration with Demi Lovato didn’t make the cut. It’s a typically heartwarming Paisley ditty which arrived with a video full of footage of fans proposing onstage at his gigs and Paisley announcing the sex of couples’ unborn babies to arena crowds. Awwww.

Who is Brad Paisley’s partner?

In 1991, Brad took his girlfriend to see the film Father Of The Bride, starring Steve Martin and Kimberly Williams. Come 1995 they’d split up and he went to see the sequel on his own. Another six years later, he began dating the bride in question - "She seems like a great girl,” he told Good Housekeeping, “smart and funny and all those things that are so hard to find." In 2003 they married and now have two children. Talk about a Hollywood ending.

What is Brad Paisley’s net worth?

According to the Celebrity Net Worth website, Paisley makes between $20 million and $40 million per year and is currently worth a grand total of $95 million. That’s a whole lot of fishing rods.

Has Brad written an autobiography?

Darn right he has. 2011 saw the publication of Diary of a Player: How My Musical Heroes Made a Guitar Man Out of Me, the story of his youth and early career co-written with Rolling Stone’s David Wild. If you’ve any more questions, consider it your next stop.