Jason Aldean, ‘Fly Over States’ Honored for Chart-Topping Flight

It's shaping up to be a really great week for Jason Aldean. On Tuesday afternoon, Jason joined songwriters Neil Thrasher and Michael Dulaney at a party on Music Row to celebrate his single "Fly Over States" hitting No. 1. Written by Neil and Michael, the song was Jason's fifth No. 1 single from his My Kinda Party album.

"'Why' was our first No. 1 and then it seemed like it was about three years before we had another one so I learned early not to take them for granted and just enjoy them," Jason said just before the party revved into high gear. "It's always a good thing to show up and celebrate one of these with the writers and producers and publishers and everybody that's involved in it."

Jason almost recorded "Fly Over States" for his 2009 album Wide Open. "I actually heard the song for the first time during the recording process for the album," Jason said. "We got the song kind of late, after we had almost finished recording the album and we ran out of room to put it. I started kicking myself immediately for not cutting the song because I kept listening to the song over and over. I knew we'd made a mistake by not putting that on the record."

A good song always seems to surface when the timing is right. Jason kept the song in mind and recorded it for My Kinda Party. "It ended up being one of the very first things we cut for the My Kinda Party album," he says. "We went four singles and I was thinking 'We're not going to get a chance to get to this song because four singles is kind of what everybody does.' Luckily for us, the album was still doing well and everybody felt like we could come out with another single. We still had some momentum going on with the record so for me it was a no brainer. This was the song."

Jason has even more reason to smile this week as his brand new single, "Take a Little Ride" claimed the top spot on the all-genre iTunes singles chart, besting such acts as Katy Perry and Flo Rida to cruise into the top slot. "It's a great song to kick off the record with and it's great for my show," Jason said of the first single from his upcoming album. "We just started playing it live this past weekend for the first time. I feel like you can never go wrong with a big up tempo to kick off the record. It adds excitement and helps create a big buzz around the album. I though this song was perfect for that."

Jason is glad that fans have embraced the new song. "I hoped they would like it. That's the reason we wanted it to be the first single," he said. "This is the first time we've ever released a song and put it up on iTunes the same day as we released it to radio. So that's gonna help propel it to No. 1. The song has been out a day and we're sitting at No. 1 on iTunes, which is a big deal. If we can hold that for a few weeks, it would be really nice. Everything is setting up like we hoped it would. I thought the song was a big hit and that's why we put it out."

Jason is pictured above with producer Michael Knox (left) and Broken Bow Records CEO/President Benny Brown (center).