Watch Jason Aldean Perform Live in Times Square on GMA

Jason Aldean’s ninth studio album, 9, just dropped, and to celebrate the new record, Aldean stopped by Good Morning America to perform “We Back” from his latest set of tunes. The Georgia native performed inside the Times Square Studios in New York City, for a rowdy performance on the morning news show, backed by his band.

“We Back” was written by Florida Georgia Line‘s Tyler Hubbard, along with the Warren Brothers and Jordan Schmidt, and quickly became one of Aldean’s favorite songs on the record.

“Those guys, they’ve written a few things for me over the years. They wrote ‘Lights Come On’, they wrote ‘Burning It Down’, ‘You Make It Easy,’” Aldean told PopCulture.com. “This was one of those songs, Tyler called me up and knew we were in the studio recording, and just asked me kind of what we were looking for. I told him for us, we’re always looking for big uptempo things, just because those always seem to be the hardest things to find. And he said, ‘Well, I wanna write something, try and write something for the album.’

“So he went in literally the next day and those guys wrote that song and he sent it to me,” he added. “It was just like this missing piece that we were missing on the album that we didn’t really have yet.”

Aldean admittedly combined a few genres on the 16 tracks on 9, including country, rock and R&B – a direction he acknowledges he couldn’t have pursued if not for his loyal fans.

“Ultimately, the fan, the country music fan is the one that’s going to make the final decision,” Aldean previously told PopCulture.com and other media. “You can try to create the illusion of an artist and build them up and do all this stuff, but if it doesn’t make the connection with the guys that are ten miles outside of town, it’s all for nothing.

“You look at how many artists these record companies sign that don’t ever have a hit. If you compare that to the ones that do, it’s a really small percentage of artists that succeed and do well,” he continued. “And it’s because these guys don’t know any better than anybody else what’s going to connect with people. You never know until it gets out there and you see.”

Aldean chose not to write any songs on 9, which he says is in part because he believes his strength is in finding and portraying great songs, even if he didn’t write them.

“The one thing I’ve always tried to pay attention to is what the songs are saying,” Aldean explained. “I feel like that’s what makes it work is if it’s something that I can relate to or something that’s authentic. I feel like if I don’t do those kind of songs that are true to me and who I am, I just feel like people can see through that. I don’t know. It’s just not believable to me.”

Order 9 at JasonAldean.com.

Photo Credit: Getty / Brent N. Clarke