Hunter Hayes fans have been waiting for four years for a new album from the singer, whose last record -- The 21 Project -- came out in 2015. During an appearance on Today on Wednesday (Aug. 14), the country singer shared that not only does he have a new album in the works, but listeners won't have to wait for very long at all: The new project, titled Wild Blue, comes out on Friday (Aug. 16.)

Hayes also shared the project's title track, a meditative look back at a past breakup and the lessons learned in its aftermath. "Scared of losing you, 'cause losing you meant losing everything that I know / But I found some sunlight in the space between the losing and the letting go," he sings. "I've heard of demons but I never knew I had so many of my own / The more I learned about the love I had to give, the more they'd leave me alone..." Press play above to listen to the song.

According to the Tennesseean, "Wild Blue" was the first song Hayes wrote for his new project, which also includes previously-released single "Heartbreak." That batch of songs emerged a period in the singer's life that, he has said, was extremely fertile creatively, marked by intense honesty and catharsis. Among the events that triggered that stage in his life was the painful dissolution of his longterm relationship. That breakup finds its way into several of the songs on his new album, Hayes explains.

"It's like the song [says], 'I wish I could be mad at you,'" he tells the Tennesseean. "But we both were like, 'There' something not right here. There's nothing wrong, but there's something not right, there's missing pieces whatever those are.' I knew there was a lot of growing I had to do on my own to see those things through."

Even the project's title is personal. "I remember vividly when I was a kid picking up somebody to go to the airport and they said 'Off we go into the wild blue yonder,'" Hayes tells Billboard. "For some reason, it's always stuck in my head. I'm obsessed with aviation [and] with flying.

"It was a combination of freedom and all of my friends tell me about these flying dreams that they have when they're going through a massive life change," he continues. "And so I was manifesting everything I could to give me a flying dream...So I loved wild blue because there's so much that that meant to me and the color blue has always been my favorite color."

Furthermore, Hayes' Friday release isn't the only new body of work he's got planned. Wild Blue is part one of a trilogy, the singer explains, and he's already written part of a second project.

"I wanted [this album] to be part of a bigger picture. I didn't want to just put out an album and forget about it in two weeks," he explains to Billboard. "I know that there's more of the story to tell that I haven't figured out how to tell or lived and I don't want to separate it....I've always wanted to do a double record or whatever and so this was my chance to... really, like, just live this and go as deep as I can."

Hunter Hayes, Wild Blue Track List:

1. "Madness" (Hunter Hayes, Sam Ellis, Sara Haze)
2. "Wild Blue" (Hunter Hayes, Troy Verges, Gordie Sampson)
3. "Heartbreak" (Hunter Hayes, Thomas “Tawgs” Salter, Gordie Sampson, Simon Wilcox)
4. "One Good Reason" (Hunter Hayes, Sam Ellis)
5. "Dear God" (Hunter Hayes, Andy Grammer, Dave Spencer)*
6. "Loving You" (Hunter Hayes, Jordan Reynolds, Dave Barnes)
7. "My Song Too" (Hunter Hayes, Jordan Reynolds, Dave Barnes)
8. "One Shot" (Hunter Hayes)**
9. "Night and Day" (Hunter Hayes, Derrick Southerland, Sam Ellis)
10. "Still" (Hunter Hayes, Troy Verges, Tommee Profitt)^

produced by Hunter Hayes and Sam Ellis
* produced by Hunter Hayes and Dave Spencer
** produced by Hunter Hayes
^ produced and Engineered by Hunter Hayes

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