Jason Aldean is not the friendliest guy in country rock, and he prefers it that way.
In a recent Billboard interview, he discussed everything from the "bro" country tag (thumbs down) to frowning in photographs (thumbs up).
The piece is a humongous Q&A that will surely delight fans, but one section in particular stands out: the one where Aldean talks about the record industry and the wave of copycats it produces.
"It's the curse of Nashville," he said. "Luke [Bryan] has become a major star here in the last couple of years, and it seems like every damn artist who comes out now has got a damn baseball cap on or a hat turned around backward, trying to cop his vibe. Florida Georgia Line is killing it right now -- and the next thing you're going to see is a bunch of duos coming out, all tatted up.
"In my case, when 'Hicktown' [his 2005 debut single] came out, there was really nothing like that out there. People saw a hat act that comes out and looks like a country singer, but it's straight rock stuff -- well, then there's a wave of that stuff. If the people that run the record business in Nashville find something that works, they will run it into the ground."
Aldean was discovered at a 1998 talent show in Macon, Ga., by producer Michael Knox, who remembered Aldean "had his shirt tucked in and was a little more '90s country-looking."
"I had been looking for five years for an arena-country guy -- we hadn't had one since Garth Brooks -- who could take a heavy-metal kind of approach and really blow it out," Knox said. "But he had to be a real country boy for it to work. And I knew he could pull that off. Jason was a small-town American guy, red, white and blue, and he didn't want to be anything but country. He could just sing other things."
Check out the full interview here.