Jason Aldean: ‘Night Train’ Isn’t ‘My Kinda Party II’

Jason Aldean's last album, My Kinda Party, soared to the top of the charts, spawned five No. 1 singles and was, in his words, "career changing." Rather than try to recreate that same magic for his next project, Night Train, the "Take a Little Ride" singer decided to go in an opposite direction.

"I couldn't have asked for My Kinda Party to do any more than it did," he notes. "At the same time I feel like this album is a completely different record, and I hope when people listen to it, they realize we didn't go into the studio to record My Kinda Party II. As great as My Kinda Party was for us, it's time to shut the door on that a little bit and move on to the next thing. Ultimately, we ended up with a great album, something that I'm proud of. There's a lot of high expectations for this record from a lot of people because of the success we had before. I feel like this is a record that can stand up to that, so I'm excited about it."

The 35-year-old acknowledges Night Train is an eclectic mix of sounds. The 15-track CD has a little country, some rock 'n roll, and a tad of hip-hop -- a blend that makes perfect sense to the singer.

"When I'm looking at making a record, I don't really go in and try to find a theme or try to find anything that really ties it together," the hitmaker says. "For me it's about finding songs. You find 15 of the best songs you can find, once I get in the studio, they're going to sound like me. I don't really go in ahead of time and try to get too artsy with that stuff and overthink it. I'm not that smart. I'm not smart enough to go in there and put together some sort of theme. Put me and my band in the studio together, and it's going to sound like us. There's just no way around it."

One song in particular that holds a lot of significance for the singer is the album's title track. "A lot of times when I'm standing backstage, and I'm looking around, I see all this chaos going on backstage now," Jason explains. "It wasn't that long ago that it was me and my boys -- 12 of us on a bus, pulling a trailer. Now you go back there and there's eight or nine buses, there's nine semis. We start filing out of the venue, and that's what it looks like, it looks like a train -- a freight train -- going down the interstate."

This Night Train pulls out of the station on Oct. 16.