The Songs That Didn’t Make the Cut: Jason Aldean Tells All

Representing the great state of Georgia, Elaina Smith’s co-host from February 9-13 is none other than Jason Aldean! Aside from talking about his latest single, “How Far Does a Goodbye Go?” and his upcoming album Songs About Us, Aldean didn’t shy away from the bittersweet side of making an album, especially when certain songs he loved didn’t make it onto the record.  

Aldean revealed he felt bad for songs that aren’t going to have their moment in the spotlight. “It's really frustrating for me. It's something that I've talked to the label about, you know, over the last few years, because putting these albums together, it's really tough. I mean, it's hard and to find great songs and you feel like you find all these songs, you put them out and really only three of them, if you're lucky, four of them may get to see the light of day.”  

The country rock musician revealed they tried something different with Songs About Us. “It's tough. I mean, I hate leaving those songs on the table and not giving them their day. So that's something we've tried to do with this new album we got coming out, try to do it a little different, strategically different, and try and give some of these songs their own little time to submit it before you drop the album and things like that.”  

He explained, “For people that are wondering why we're kind of dropping the album a little different, this time, that's kind of the reason. ‘Whose Rearview’ was really one of the reasons for that, because I love that song. I definitely thought it should have been a single at some point. We just kind of ran out of time on that record and the album [Highway Desperado] kind of just had done its thing. So I think we went in with this new album really trying to pay attention to that and do it in a different way.” 

Songs About Us drops April 24. Pre-order or pre-save here.