Country stars Jason Aldean and Carrie Underwood joined forces for “If I Didn’t Love You,” the lead single from Aldean’s upcoming 10th album. Aldean released the music video for the song on Wednesday, featuring both stars performing the song at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville. This is surprisingly Aldean’s first duet with Underwood and the power ballad has already been a hit on the County charts.
In the video, footage of the two performing the song is interspersed with scenes of Aldean wandering a mansion, missing the love he sings about in the lyrics. “If I Didn’t Love You” was written by Aldean’s band members Kurt Allison and Tully Kennedy with John Morgan and Lydia Vaughn. “It’s a song about getting over a relationship and sort of knowing what you need to do in your head, but it’s really kind of hard to do that in the heart,” Aldean told iHeartCountry earlier this month. He described the song as a “breakup song kind of things.”
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Although the song’s subject is a departure from Aldean’s usual lyrics, he said he thought it was “great” the moment it was presented to him. They still needed a duet partner, and Underwood was the first person he thought of. They recorded the song without her at first, just hoping she would have a moment in her schedule to record the vocals. Thankfully, she did.
“It was a good thing because I had already cut my part and I had no duet partner to sing the song with,” Aldean said. “So when she finally joined it, came in and started putting her vocal on the song, it just kind of took it to a new level and turned it into this big, huge power ballad sort of thing. Something that we definitely needed for the record, too.”
“If I Didn’t Love You” is the latest in a long line of duets from Aldean, going back to his 2010 collaboration with Kelly Clarkson, “Don’t You Wanna Stay?” He also worked with Miranda Lambert on “Drowns the Whiskey” and Kelsea Ballerini on “First Time Again.” Underwood recorded “Remind Me” with Brad Paisley, “Somethin’ Bad” with Miranda Lambert, and “The Fighter” with Keith Urban. Earlier this year, she joined the Christian rock band Needtobreathe on “I Wanna Remember.” Underwood’s most recent album is My Savior, which is her first gospel album and was released in March.
