As country singer Jason Aldean put together his third record, 2009’s “Wide Open,” he and his team were working hard to find the best songs Nashville had to offer. But because Aldean wasn’t yet a Music City A-lister himself, he wasn’t able to attract the attention of Nashville’s finest, most storied and proven songwriters.
A short 18 months after “Wide Open” — and its three No. 1 hits, including “She’s Country,” “Big Green Tractor” and “Truth” — Aldean was entertaining an embarrassment of songwriting pitches. Now that this small-town Georgia boy had shown his ability to break a hit, Nashville’s biggest writers were interested.
“If a songwriter has a great song, they want to make sure that song gets out there, so they’re going to pitch it to all the major artists — and unless you’re one of those major artists, you’re not going to get pitched those A-level songs,” said Aldean, who headlines the Pepsi Center tonight.
“And with the success of ‘She’s Country’ and ‘Big Green Tractor,’ when it came time for (our) next album, people looked at us a little differently. It was like, ‘Oh, you have three No. 1’s on that record,’ and ‘I’d love to have a Jason Aldean cut.’
“It makes it a hell of a lot easier to put together an album,” he said.
Country radio fans are familiar with Aldean’s rise from low-level showman to top-tier performer. He brought fans in for the first time via his 2007 track “Johnny Cash,” a rock-infused country charmer that showed off his appeal, attitude and preference for electric guitars over acoustic. Then his career broke wide open with, well, “Wide Open.”
His latest, 2010’s “My Kinda Party,” solidified him as FM country elite, as an artist who isn’t afraid to cross into unexpected genres and work with foreign-to-country artists.
Aldean is best known among certain circles as the country crooner who duets with pop diva Kelly Clarkson on “Don’t You Wanna Stay” — and with rapper Ludacris on the remix of “Dirt Road Anthem.” Both are bold moves, considering that his rock tendencies lend themselves more to the music of Kid Rock or Nickelback than anybody else.
For “Don’t You Wanna Stay,” Aldean got his first choice in Clarkson.
“The song was pitched to me, and I loved it,” he said. “It wasn’t written to be a duet or anything, but the more I listened to it, the more I felt like it could be a duet. I wanted a female voice on it, and we threw around names. The first one I threw out was Kelly’s.
“I’d never met her, and I ended up having a really cool friendship with her. . . . The crossover appeal that that song had let her fans know who I was, and having that crossover was huge for my career.”
As for the hip-hop-country of “Dirt Road Anthem,” originally a solo track with Aldean handling his own Southern rhymes but later remixed to include some flow from Ludacris, Aldean liked that it was different from what he was hearing on country radio. It helped, too, that he was already a big fan of Ludacris — and Eminem, Kanye West, Pitbull and other MCs.
“You wanna try something new with every record,” he said. “The last thing you want to do is go in and make the same album over and over.”
The rock-styled guitars that make up so much of Aldean’s music aren’t there by accident. He was reared on traditional country, but grew up loving rock ‘n’ roll.
“I loved ’80s rock and Southern rock, so my style has more of that flair to it,” he said. “But having that ability to go out and experiment — that’s what music’s about to me.”
Now Aldean is planning studio time for early November to start recording his next album, aiming for an early-summer 2012 release.
“We’ll be working with some of the same writers, including Neil Thrasher, Wendell Mobley, Dave Lee Murphy and Brett James,” Aldean said of his hitmaking friends.
“We don’t have any guest stars just yet, but we’re working on a couple surprises for the fans.”
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com;
Jason Aldean
Rock-infused country. Pepsi Center, 1000 Chopper Circle, featuring Chris Young, Thompson Square and DJ Silver. 7:30 tonight. $39.75-$53.75 .
