Brett Eldredge Wants to ‘Share His Heart’ With New Album, ‘Sunday Drive’

Brett Eldredge‘s fifth studio album is officially on the way! The singer announced on Friday, April 17 that he will be releasing his latest project, Sunday Drive, on July 10. Eldredge worked on the album with producers Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk and shared that the record is an entirely new journey for him both sonically and personally. “I had been making records in a certain way for a long time,” he told PopCulture.com and other media. “But I felt in a place where there is so much more I could give and there is so much more that I have as an artist that I haven’t shown, vocally, musically and everything.”

The Illinois native revealed that Sunday Drive began to take shape during a solo trip he took to California, holed up in “a little beach cottage” with a flip phone, a pen and a notepad. “It was a very lonely time in some sense, but also a time I needed to make myself feel something and really let that stuff come out, just for my personal self, and then it grew my music.” That trip coincided with a break from social media and, essentially, life in the public eye, which Eldredge explained was a way to learn more about himself.

“I was somebody that was on social media all the time,” he admitted. “I don’t regret that, but it definitely wasn’t healthy for me in the long run. I needed to make a change, so I made the jump off and I wasn’t doing a lot of things, I wasn’t going to events, I was just trying to not worry about what I felt I was supposed to say. I was trying not to listen to radio, I was just listening to whatever I was listening to, I wanted to figure out what I needed to say… I just needed some time for myself to step away and find my heart.”

“It changed me,” he continued. “It changed the way I look at how I create, how vulnerable I get. I’ve been very vulnerable over the last couple of years compared to ever before, and I learned just how much farther I can go into it, and tried to just share myself and share my heart and how empowering that can be. Self-awareness is incredible for me now and figuring out who I am. It’s a lifelong journey, but I am in a great spot for it, and still have a long way to go, but this process definitely changed my life.”

Eldredge teased the album with three new songs on Friday, sharing lead single “Gabrielle” along with two additional tracks, “Crowd My Mind” and “Where the Heart Is.” Reflecting on releasing music amid a global pandemic, the 34-year-old explained that he is hoping to help fans find some light the same way that his favorite artists did for him.

“There’s situations where people try to push their albums back or their music back or their single release back,” he said. “For me, it was like, ‘I wan to be the escape that artists have given me in tough times in my life. I want to get this out there.’ Whether I can promote it in the traditional way or not, I’m gonna get it out there and I’m gonna hopefully help people through certain tough times, this is, or just in any time in their life, I think that music is huge and it speaks beyond any kind of situation we’re in and I think that it was important to get this music out.”