Country music star Luke Combs apologizes for having used Confederate flag imagery

Country music star Luke Combs is apologizing for appearing several years ago with Confederate flags, saying he is now aware of how painful the symbolism of the flag is to some Americans

"There's no excuse for those images," Combs said Wednesday during Country Radio Seminar, an annual country radio conference.

The 30-year-old Combs' apology follows fellow country music star Morgan Wallen's label suspending him indefinitely for using a racial slur in private.

Combs said the images were from seven or eight years ago, when he was younger and did not fully understand the history and context of the flag beyond "Southern pride," according to the Associated Press.

As the standard of the Confederate States of America, which seceded from the United States in 1861 over the issue of slavery, the flag is associated with the South's long history of slavery. 

"And as I have grown in my time as an artist and as the world has changed drastically in the last five to seven years, I am now aware of how painful that image can be to someone else," Combs also said. "I would never want to be associated with something that brings so much hurt to someone else."