Jason Aldean

In the 2010s, Jason Aldean hit paydirt with a canny mix of yesteryear and up-to-the-minute: His 10-gallon Stetson and outlaw’s glower signalled vague traditionalism, while his songs—party-hearty small-town anthems with revved-up guitars and flashes of hip-hop—embodied the definitively modern machismo that much of popular country was pointing toward. Born in Macon, Georgia, in 1977, Aldean moved to Nashville at 21 and toiled on the bar circuit for half a decade before signing with Broken Bow Records. His debut yielded three hit singles, but the big breakthrough was 2010’s My Kinda Party, which established Aldean as one of country’s top stars. He played up his provincialism on hits like “Fly Over States” and “The Only Way I Know”, both paeans to life in the sticks, but Aldean is a stealth cosmopolitan, a natural crossover artist whose commercial instincts have proven shrewd and influential. He rapped on the 2011 No. 1 hit “Dirt Road Anthem” and continued to integrate hip-hop and EDM production on 2012’s Night Train and 2014’s Old Boots, New Dirt. Aldean was onstage at 2017’s Route 91 Harvest festival in Paradise, Nevada, when a gunman opened fire, killing 60 and wounding hundreds. The following weekend, he appeared on Saturday Night Live to perform a tribute to the fallen—a commanding cover of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down”, whose message of surly stoicism fit Aldean to a T. That sentiment has carried Aldean across a number of albums to follow, including a pair of tributes to his hometown and state (2021’s Macon, 2022’s Georgia) and 2023’s Highway Desperado, a lonely ode to the road that lies ahead and the trials along the way.