Jason Aldean Defends Bro-Country Music: ‘It Helped the Whole Format’

Jason Aldean is one of the front-runners in the bro-country style of music, which has been equally liked and loathed by music fans. But the Georgia native defends it, insisting bro-country was beneficial to the entire country music genre.

“What we were doing not only helped us, but it helped the whole format in general,” Aldean said in a report from CMT. “I’ve never recorded a song that I thought was ‘Hey Jude.’ I cut things I think are cool and things I want to go out and play. Hopefully, there’s an audience that likes what I’m doing and will come along for the ride.”

Aldean is one of several artists, including Luke Bryan, Florida Georgia Line and others, who are considered the front-runners in the latest style of music. But the 41-year-old insists he wasn’t trying to fit into a certain type. Instead, he was just singing about the things he related to.

“I always heard myself, Luke and FGL — we were the ones that got mentioned in that a lot,” Aldean admitted. “And my thing is we’re singing songs about what we know: trucks, girl and parties. That’s what we all grew up doing. But I also thought if you listen to the rest of my records, you would see songs that had that subject matter. There were a couple, but there were also a lot of songs that didn’t.”

Those who try to label him as one style, he believes never really got to know his music.

“My whole thing is if you’re going to take a few songs and categorize me as something after listening to a few songs, so be it,” Aldean said. “But if you take the time, and you listen to the whole albums, every song we’ve done, I think you’ll see that your assessment is a little off.”

Aldean just revealed he is back in the studio, working on a new set of tunes, the follow-up to last year’s Rearview Town. While he hasn’t revealed many details of his next project, we do know the title of at least one of the songs.

“‘Ride All Night’ is one of the songs on the record,” revealed Aldean, which is also the name of his upcoming tour. “To me, just finding names like that that I don’t even really know what the hell it means. It’s just a cool name for the tour. I’m always excited for the tour. I mean, we change things up.

“We get a new design for the stage and get to go out with new stuff, and it’s like Christmas morning for us,” he continued. “I mean, we get to walk out, we got big lighting, new stuff. It’s fun. It’s like being on a playground for us, and it makes the shows fun.”

Photo Credit: Getty / Steven Ferdman