The modern country megastar returns with his first album since 2023’s Highway Desperado. While his output this decade so far hasn’t been quite as well lauded after as his previous work, we still enjoyed Desperado, and have been liking the singles from this release we’ve heard so far. So, how does album number 13 compare to the rest of his sprawling discography? Read on to find out!
Opening on a surprisingly slower, southern soul track I’m ’Anytime Soon’, it’s a great song in its own right! The steady pace lends perfectly to Jason’s vocals, it giving off vibes of modern Blake Shelton in the best possible ways. The lower verse builds perfectly into the expectedly arena-filling, massive chorus, and it’s one that’ll be stuck in my head for days to come! It’d make a great single that’s for sure, even if the structure is also surprisingly not hugely radio-friendly. For one, it’s pushing five minutes in length, and for two it has a pretty long extended outro. It adds to the southern rock feel to the track, and also ups the epicness fantastically. It’s a great way to open the album, and an easy early highlight!
The rockin’ vibes continue through ‘Drinking About You’. It still has a steadier pace to it though, and similarly to the previous song it drops down for the verses before exploding into a hugely catchy, boot-stompin’ chorus. The bass was a big highlight through the track, something I’m surprised to say about country music, but Tully Kennedy kills it here, showing how criminally underrated he is. He rather successfully distracts from the vaguely cheesy, typical-country lyrics, too. We get an awesome little guitar solo tucked away in the middle too, breaking the track up perfectly. It’s a more radio-friendly track for sure, but that doesn’t make it any less great. Two for two, so far!
The first single of the album, ‘Don’t Tell On Me’, is also the first closer to a country-ballad on the release. Having said that, it still has plenty of rock elements to it, the distorted guitar adding plenty of depth. Because of said rockiness, it does feel a touch on the darker side for radio-country, feeling closer to Shaman’s Harvest than Russel Dickerson. It follows an expected radio formula and is barely three minutes, but was an excellent choice for a single, having plenty of weight and catchiness and being another huge highlight of the album.
Another single, ‘How Far Does a Goodbye Go’, slows things down even more, stepping into true ballad territory with the main focus being on the acoustic guitar and Jason’s powerful vocals. Some other instrumentation comes in around them, the drums and bass shining at times throughout too, but the focus is very much more intimately on Aldean. Having said that, we do get an AWESOME, Slash-like guitar solos and lead bits throughout, which I loved. It’s another fantastic choice for a single off the album, as it’s a really great song. It also feels pretty different to the previous song, showing off Aldean’s rather impressive range within the genre. A song well worth checking out!
‘Songs About Us’ is the first track on the album to feature a guest artist. Luke Bryan fits in with Jason Aldean like a glove here. The same could be said for David Lee Murphy on the early 2000’s country-like single ‘Dust on the Bottle’. It’s a fun, bouncy track and David does an awesome job complimenting Jason. Honestly, it’s a big highlight of the album as a whole! And, as much as I like Luke Bryan, the track is a little too far-leaning into cheese-territory. It comes across very pandering. The other guest spot goes to Aldean’s wife, Brittany. It’s another ballad, of course, and the duet between them is beautiful. Their harmonies work surprisingly well together, and her voice on its own is also great. It’s an interesting topic choose for a couple to sing to, but it works for them both, and is a good song! It’s a pretty standard country-rock ballad, and an easy choice for another single, but that doesn’t stop it from being a great.
Tracks like ‘Good Thing Going’, ‘Country Into Rock ‘n’ Roll’, and ‘Fight a Fire’ are more rock infused bangers. None are bad songs by any stretch, with ‘…Rock ‘n’ Roll’ being another big album highlight that easily makes it onto our playlist. (Also, the bass on the track is again tasty). However, they are fairly similar tracks, especially to a few other tracks earlier on, hence why I’ve grouped them together here. On an album of this length, I can’t talk about every song separately, or I’ll look like a madman!
Meanwhile, songs like ‘She’s Why’, ‘Backroads of my Memory’, ‘The High Road’, ‘What a Little Heartache’ and, heck, most of the rest of the album, is on the slower side. There is some variety throughout it, don’t get me wrong. Some of it is on the straight-up rockier side, while the likes of ‘Hard to Love You’ are a bit more HARDY-vibed. Both the other singles on the album, ‘Help You Remember’ and ‘Her Favourite Color’ are good too, and fit the pace of the second half of the album rather perfectly. There isn’t a bad song across the whole thing, but 20 tracks is a LOT, especially when a solid half the album is so similar.
Overall: Don’t get me wrong, while the last couple of paragraphs sound a touch negative, this is still a good album. If you are a fan of Aldean already, or general country music over the last two decades, you’ll get at least something you love from this. He’s a hit-making machine at this point, and a good few of these tracks are easily up there alongside his best. But man, I am getting so sick of bloated country albums. Nashville needs to learn to trim the fat, as instead of getting solid albums, we are getting huge albums of a lot of similar sounding stuff, watering down the good stuff when checked out in full. Political leanings aside, this is a good collection of songs, and I’ll certainly be spinning some of the tracks from it again!
The Score: 8/10