Jason Aldean wears many hats, but family man tops the list.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, the country music star — who released his latest album, “Songs About Us,” last week — opened up building and maintaining a healthy relationship with wife, Brittany, explained why the pair finally decided to collaborate on a song for the album, and shared how his family inspired him to write and produce a deeply personal record.
“It’s all over the board,” Aldean said of his album. “It’s love songs, it’s heartache songs, it’s all of it. It’s just things that we all kind of experience on a daily basis and definitely that I’m experiencing at the moment. That’s kind of the meaning behind all of this.”
One major theme in his life: his 11-year marriage to Brittany. While the pair are “best friends,” said Aldean, it’s not uncommon to have occasional disagreements.
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“I just think that sometimes you realize that you’re just not always going to see eye-to-eye on things,” Aldean said. “There are certain things that she’s never going to see where I’m coming from and vice versa, right? And you just kind of have to go with it. Agree to disagree.”
“But once you learn to kind of let go of that stuff instead of like let it just sit there and bother you all day… it’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re never going to see eye-to-eye on this, so let’s keep moving.'”
The couple, who wed in 2015, share two children together: son, Memphis, 8, and daughter, Navy, 7. Aldean is also dad to two other children, Keeley, 23, and Kendyl, 18, whom he shares with ex-wife, Jessica Ussery.
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“I just feel like we’ve always been super tight. I mean we’re best friends,” Aldean said of his relationship with Brittany. “I feel like that’s why it works. We are super supportive of each other, whether it be my business ventures or her business ventures or whatever the case may be. I think she’s turned into a great business-minded person. She’s a great mom and all the things.”
“When you’re first getting married and getting together, you’re just like, ‘Well, this is fun.’ And then as time goes on, it’s like, she’s kind of figured out her place in all this,” he continued. “Because it was a big adjustment for her, you know, us getting married and her coming into a relationship where I have this established career and her trying to figure out how she kind of fits into all that.”
“To see how she’s handled that has been amazing. Where we’re at now is, we have this amazing family, amazing life and careers, and it’s just, it’s been awesome.”
Throughout their marriage, Aldean and Brittany — an entrepreneur and founder of Vada fragrance — hadn’t found the right opportunity to collaborate professionally until now.
Earlier this year, the pair released their first duet, “Easier Gone.”
“It was something we’ve always talked about,” said Aldean. “It’d be cool to do this if the right song came along, that was always my thing. Because, you know, I always feel like the song has to come in. And then you kind of figure out who goes on it versus going, ‘Hey, let’s you and I do a song!'”
“And a lot of times, I feel like with husbands and wives doing songs, it could go one of two ways. It’s either really cheesy or it could be cool,” he continued. “I’ve seen it both ways. So, I wanted to be really selective about what we did and for it to still be kind of on brand with me and my music and what I do.”
After some discussion, the couple decided against pursuing a “sappy love song” and went for something completely opposite.
“I tend to do more of those kind of songs anyway, the heartache and heartbreak type of songs,” said Aldean. “We took Brittany into the studio and she crushed it, did great.”
“I think I turned more into like producer mode at that point,” he continued. “She had never been in the studio and never really gone in and done that… And then as she was in there getting it figured out, she just started doing stuff that was kind of blowing me away. It was a really cool experience for me, not only as the artist but as her husband and just kind of watching her do that.”
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Another song that hits the heartstrings is a track titled, “Help You Remember” — a tune about the pain one feels while watching a loved one suffer from memory loss.
“It was just such a different kind of song,” said Aldean, who has multiple family members who are suffering or have suffered from dementia. “I feel like a lot of times for us, we put an album out and the fans want to hear ‘My Kind of Party’ or ‘She’s Country,’ or like those kind of things. I put a song like this out, it’s a little bit outside the box for us, but at the same time, it was a little bit of a therapeutic thing for us to write.”
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“After we started playing it for everybody, it was like, they would just tear up and start crying. It was hitting home with them. And you start figuring out that, man, there’s a lot of people out there that are dealing with this kind of thing, whether it be dementia, Alzheimer’s, whatever it is. And it’s just, it’s heartbreaking to watch.”
With 12 studio albums under his belt, Aldean credits his success to one thing: authenticity.
“I think you have to be authentic. That’s the only way it works,” he said. “Some people are gonna like that and some people aren’t. I’m never gonna make a fan out of everybody that’s out there. It’s never gonna happen. And I know that. That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“I’m not trying to make a fan out of everybody I have a fan base that likes what I do. That’s what I play for, and I feel like they know me, they know what I’m saying, who I am. It doesn’t affect the way I go about my day or my business or how I release a record or what I say during a show or what kind of music I’m gonna record or whatever the case may be. If it feels good, and I like it, then that’s what we’re going to do.”
