Jason Aldean Focused On His Live Show When Recording ‘Rearview Town’
When recording 'Rearview Town,' Jason Aldean chose songs based on what he felt like would relate during his live shows.
Jason Aldean’s eighth studio album, Rearview Town, showcases the country singer’s versatility. The 15-track release features his country rock edge best suited in the live setting as well as his more sentimental side as can be heard on the album’s lead single, “You Make It Easy.”
While the singer doesn’t have any songwriting credit on the album, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t in the writing room penning songs for the project. During an interview with Nashville media, the singer shares that he intended to record some of his songs but as the familiar Music City mantra states, the best song always wins.
“More times than not, I’m my own worst critic when it comes to my songwriting,” Aldean admits. “I moved to town as a songwriter so I’m capable of writing songs, and did. I wrote quite a few songs, actually, for this record and some things that were really cool.”
Aldean says that he shared many of his songs with producer Michael Knox and while he was at first hesitant to record them, his producer suggested otherwise.
“He’s always like, ‘Dude, the stuff you’re writing is really cool. You should cut it.’ And then I’m still thinking, ‘No, I don’t think so, man. I think I want to cut this Neil Thrasher song or this David Lee Murphy song,'” Aldean explains. “This record, I really made an effort to sit down and write and there’s some cool stuff. And who knows? That may end up on another record or on somebody else’s record. But for me, I go gut-instinct, which is if I think this song’s better than one I wrote, then I’m gonna cut the other song.”
One of his gut instincts include his sultry lead single, “You Make It Easy.” Written by Florida Georgia Line’s Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley with Morgan Wallen and Jordan Schmidt, when Aldean heard the song he instantly thought of his wife, Brittany.
Aldean first heard the song when Hubbard came over to his house. As they rode around in his truck listening to some new tracks Hubbard had penned, the FGL singer shared one song he wrote the previous Friday. By the time “You Make It Easy” got to the chorus, Aldean knew it was something special.
“I heard the first half chorus and I stopped and I’m like, ‘Are y’all cutting this song?’ And he’s like, ‘Oh man, I don’t know. We just wrote it. We don’t go to the studio for another few months.’ I was like, ‘I want it.’ And he’s like, ‘When are you goin’ in?’ I said, ‘Two weeks,'” Aldean recalls.
Since Aldean was headed to the studio before Florida Georgia Line, Hubbard told him if he wanted to take the song he could. While “You Make It Easy” wasn’t written about Brittany specifically, it reminded Aldean of her which is why he wanted to record it.
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Fittingly, “You Make It Easy” is Brittany’s favorite song on the album and Aldean laughs as he recalls how she often tells him that she knew it was a hit when she first heard it.
“I’m like, ‘I thought it was a hit, too. That’s why I played it for you the first time before you ever heard it,'” he says.
Another album highlight is “Drowns the Whiskey,” which features Miranda Lambert. Aldean actually sent Lambert another song before they agreed on “Drowns the Whiskey.” He says he’s always looking for songs that lend to a collaboration and having previously recorded “Grown Woman” with the singer as a duet featured on his second album, Relentless, he knew he wanted to reach out to Lambert again.
Jason Aldean, Miranda Lambert; Photo by Chris Polk/ACMA2017/Getty Images for ACM
“I’ve always been a big fan of her voice and her style and I just wanted to do something else with her,” he explains. “She’s such a great singer, such a great harmony singer, too, that she knocked it out. It was great and one of the highlights of this record.”
Aldean’s live show is an important selling tool for the record and the three-time ACM Entertainer of the Year says he makes sure he records songs that will translate well in the live setting. While he admits sometimes he gets lost in a song in anticipation of performing it live, it isn’t until he listens more intently to the lyric that he decides whether to cut the song.
“I’m constantly thinking about how those songs are going to fit in with the ‘She’s Countrys’ and the ‘Dirt Roads’ and all the songs that we already play, so that’s something that’s always in the back of my mind when we’re cutting songs for a record,” he admits.
Happy bday to My stage right wingman for almost 20 years. Happy bday Dooooo @kurtallison #kurtman
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The singer has had a rough six months following his performance at Route 91 Harvest where a gunman fired on the festival crowd during Aldean’s headlining set on Oct. 1. While there is no song that touches upon the tragedy on the release, he will be dedicating the entire album to the victims of the Las Vegas massacre.
“As far as cutting songs for this record and feeling like I needed to go back in and put an exclamation mark on the record for what happened in Las Vegas, I didn’t feel the need to do that,” he says. “Ninety-five percent of this record was completed before that ever happened. I think we went and cut four more songs after the fact but it was things we already had . . . Honestly, I didn’t feel the need that I had to go record a, ‘Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)’ kind of moment on the record just to put the exclamation mark on my album.”
Instead, Aldean focused on the songs he knew his fans would enjoy in the live setting. He says one of the best things about releasing an album is he can now go out and start playing some of the new material live. Fans can expect to hear tracks off Rearview Town throughout Aldean’s High Noon Neon Tour, which launches on May 10.
“I love going and playing the new songs. We’ve been working on this album for a year or more, and so when you finally get a chance to put it out there and people check it out, it’s exciting for us. I’m excited to be able to play it for ‘em,” he concedes.
