How Jason Aldean Is Sticking to His Guns on New Album, ‘9’
Superstar explains why he's trying to avoid chasing country's current trends.
The sound of country music is always changing, although the process seems to be speeding up lately. As more and more Top 40 influence penetrates the country charts, more and more artists lean their own sound in that direction, but Jason Aldean says he’s not one to chase trends.
Speaking about his new album, 9, in a Nashville press conference Wednesday (October 23), the longtime superstar explained why he’s willing to “tweak” his country approach, but pays little attention to what his peers are up to.
“I think a lot of times in the music business, if you have an artist with a certain sound and it’s working … everybody kind of tries to follow that and do their own version of whatever that is,” Aldean said. “I just know I’ve always been comfortable in what we do and the music that I make. It’s country and rock and a little blues and some R&B, I’ve always thought what we did was cool and it made me think it sounded good.”
His 9 album does include programmed tracks and finds Aldean pushing his limits on tracks like “Got What I Got” or “Blame It on You,” but much of the album remains right in Aldean’s country-rock wheelhouse — just check out salt-of-the-earth repping tracks like “Keeping It Small Town” or “Dirt We Were Raised On.”
“The one thing I’ve always tried to pay attention to is what the songs are saying,” Aldean went on. “I feel like that’s what makes it work is if it’s something I can relate to, or something that’s authentic. If I don’t do those kind of songs that are true to me and who I am, I feel like people can see through that.”
The project’s first single, “We Back,” is some pretty strong evidence of that belief. A throwback to the muscular, hard-rocking sound of Aldean’s early hits, it would have felt progressive as recently as five years ago. But now? It almost seems old school against a backdrop of crossover collaborations and hip-hop beats, and Aldean says he intends to stick to his guns.
“All these people on Music Row, everybody that runs a record label, all the string pullers or whatever they want to call themselves, they can think they got it figured out but I can tell you they don’t,” he explained. “Ultimately the country music fan is the one who’s gonna make the final decision. You can try to create the illusion of an artist and try to build them up, all this stuff. But if it doesn’t make a connection with the guys who are 10 miles outside of town, it’s all for nothing.”
Aldean’s 9 comes out November 22.
