Jason Aldean reflects on his career success
Country superstar has just released his tenth album
“I don’t think I have any stress right now.”
Country music superstar Jason Aldean is relaxed, sipping an early-morning cup of black coffee while seated in a leather recliner in a Music Row business office in Nashville, Tennessee, and discussing the April 21 release of “Macon, Georgia.” The new double album marks his tenth studio release in his 17-year Music City career.
On both a personal and professional level, the 2019 Academy of Country Music Dick Clark Artist of the Decade Award winner (14 consecutive top-five singles on country radio between 2013 and 2019) has many reasons to be relaxed.
The November 2021-released “Macon” half of his double-album has yielded country radio chart-topping Carrie Underwood duet, “If I Didn’t Love You.” The single has crossed over and is his highest Billboard Hot 100 chart placement in a decade. In addition, the Grammy-nominated power ballad won Single of The Year at the Academy of Country Music Awards.
For Nashville as a city, he’s one of the critical catalysts in evolving the city’s infamous Lower Broadway area. The 2000s on Broadway were about “drinking at Tootsie’s, then getting a Hank Williams fly swatter and Patsy Cline shot glass from a tourist shop,” Aldean said. Now, via locales like his four-yearold Jason Aldean’s Kitchen + Rooftop Bar, Lower Broadway is a booming social locale real-estate dynamo.
Though he says he doesn’t play concerts to amplify vocally conservative political stances (“I still think people would rather hear my songs than care too much about my political views,” he says), Aldean and his wife rang in the New Year with former President of the United States Donald Trump.
“I didn’t know what to think when I [went to Mar-A-Lago]. I’ve been around many celebrities, but there’s a huge difference between being around those guys and being around President Trump. He has an aura, but I feel like he’s also still human, and I might feel like we’re friends,” Aldean says with a laugh in his voice.
“We ate breakfast and lunch together, went to the driving range, played 18 holes of golf, and then [Brittany and I] went to his New Year’s party.”
The struggles for consistency and success
Aldean arrived in Nashville with two goals: Foremost, he was beyond a point where balancing his career driving a Pepsi truck and attempting to be a country music artist felt sustainable. He also hated watching his mother work at a job she did not enjoy. So he swore that he would not repeat her process.
Chronicling his path, he highlights winning the ACM Award for Best New Male Artist after releasing his self-titled debut album as a significant achievement, but a “sophomore slump” of sorts on “Relentless,” his second album, made him nervous.
Bridging the gap between rap-rock and pop-country on his 2009 album “Wide Open” had him feeling like he was “on a roll” but scared of falling from the top of the country charts. By the release of his fifth album, “Night Train,” in 2012, he finally began to “break out of his head and put [his] foot on the gas” in terms of reaching next-level success.
“I hate it when my creative process gets cloudy,” Aldean says when asked what stands in his way now about staying on top of the country music industry.
Since June 2018, he’s been the proprietor of his Lower Broadway bar, coowner of the multi-million-dollar outdoor company Buck Commander and a thriving live touring artist for over a decade.
“I never know which songs are gonna be hits, and there’s an example of a song that went from me thinking not too much about it being my longest number one hit,” says Aldean about his 2009 hit “Big Green Tractor.”
There is a half-million-dollar John Deere tractor sitting behind the bar in the middle of the main floor of his kitchen and rooftop bar establishment. When a song allows an artist that level of iconic success, a track has advanced far beyond only creating three minutes of joy.
Regarding his artistic vision, he believes that keeping it simple yields his best results: “songs I like that I could see myself performing every night” is his strategy.
“I learned years ago not to let a lot of people hear these songs because everyone is going to have an opinion, and I lose a lot of who I am and what I like because I’m over-thinking the process,” Aldean says.
Aldean’s latest album kicks off his career’s next era
“Macon, Georgia” finds Aldean honed in on his vision for this era of his career. On past albums, songs like “She’s Country” and his version of Colt Ford and Brantley Gilbert’s rap-country movement progenitor “Dirt Road Anthem” were songs that the artist feared could fail. Now, he’s instead locked in on 20 new songs and ten re-released live versions of fan-favorite material.
More important than any other song on “Macon, Georgia” is “Your Mama.” The performer considers the song about his mother – who raised him as a single parent – as the most personal song he’s ever recorded. “I would never normally sing a song like that,” he says. But now, at a place where he can reward the effort she put into raising him, he feels the song is warranted.
“I’ve had collaborations not work well before, but when Carrie was warming up – she hadn’t even cut her vocal yet – my producer, Michael [Knox] and I said, “Oh. My. God,” says Aldean about “If I Didn’t Love You,” one of many ballads Aldean is proud of in his career.
“I once heard Lionel Richie say that two things never go out of style: love songs and breakup songs – people are always going through one or the other,” he adds, noting wisdom that has aided him in his career.
Hearkening back to his breakout 2006 singles “Why” and “Amarillo Sky,” plus Grammy-nominated 2010 Kelly Clarkson duet “Don’t You Wanna Stay,” he’s appreciated how well his fans have taken to his less rowdy offerings.
On “Georgia,” he adds to this list with a personal favorite of his, a cover version of “Heaven,” Bryan Adams’ June 1985 Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping single.
“I’m an 80s kid, so I love those rock guys like Bryan and their big ballads,” Aldean says. He met the “Summer of ’69” singer on the second episode of the eighth season of CMT’s Crossroads in June 2009, where they initially paired for “Heaven.”
“When we did ‘Heaven,’ I thought I would take the first verse and chorus, and he would come in for the second verse. But, when it came time for him to sing, Bryan just nodded at me to keep singing,” Aldean says, still with a surprise in his voice over a decade later. The version from the show is an “underground” favorite of sorts for Aldean superfans, so he recorded the studio version that appears on his “Georgia” album to appease their interest.
Aldean’s influence is his legacy
“I was a new artist trying to make my little mark in Nashville after moving here in November of 1998,” Aldean said. “Changing the genre’s sound a little bit while doing that was kinda cool.”
He says Sam Hunt and Morgan Wallen are the artists who he is most proud of in carrying his style forward.
About the recent country chart-topper, Aldean notes that the “Body Like A Back Road” and “Hard to Forget” singer’s lyrical delivery is “so cool.”
As for Wallen, “Broadway Girls,” his December 2021 Billboard Hip-Hop Chart collaboration with rapper Lil Durk, mentions the rooftop dancefloor at Aldean’s Broadway bar in the first six words.
“I know Morgan frequents my bar quite a bit, and when his manager sent [”Broadway Girls”] to me, I backed it up when I heard him say ‘I met her down at Aldean’s.’ Getting name-checked in a song that people are hearing everywhere these days is pretty cool.”
“In the past five years, I’ve finally been able to take the time to accept that I’ve accomplished far more in my career than I ever thought I would,” Aldean candidly states.