Justin Moore’s sixth studio LP is something of a microcosm of the style he’s crafted since releasing his self-titled debut album in 2009: narrative-driven, traditional country music steeped in Southern rock. “Southern rock is something that I've always talked about being as big an influence on me, as big an inspiration musically to me as straight-ahead, traditional country,” he tells Apple Music. “I always have felt like we've been kind of a mixture of the two, and that's something that I certainly try to express on each album we do.” A slim collection at eight tracks, Straight Outta the Country is all killer, no filler, showcasing what Moore does best: heartfelt ballads (“Consecutive Days Alive,” “More Than Me”), rowdy arena rockers (“Straight Outta the Country”), and nostalgic tearjerkers (“We Didn’t Have Much”). Below, Moore shares what inspired each of the tracks on Straight Outta the Country. “Hearing Things” “Growing up the way that I did—in a town in the middle of nowhere in Arkansas, 300 people or whatever the population is—moving to Nashville, it certainly was a culture shock. It was always my intention to move back home at some point, once I got my career off the ground or I just completely failed, one of the two. When my wife and I had our first daughter, who's now 11, we had the opportunity to move back. I thought this song reminded me of those early days of being in Nashville, going, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’—an 18-year-old kid that ain't never really been away from home, and I found myself in a much different environment than I did in my first 18 years alive.” “Consecutive Days Alive” “I just thought that was a really clever hook and line [‘Broke my record for consecutive days alive’]. To me, it's a life-lesson song. I've kind of gone from the guy who was young and wild and first being on the road, acting a fool, and kind of feel as though I relate more to the older guy. Not that I'm 50 or 60 years old, but I feel like I relate to the singer in the song that maybe overhears some younger guys at the bar and goes, ‘Damn, I've done all that and more.’” “We Didn’t Have Much” “I had heard this song before [the pandemic] hit us, and loved it right away because it just kind of reminded me of—in all honesty, and it sounds cliché, but—how I grew up. And I've learned that throughout my career, that if I can relate to it, a lot of other people normally can as well. Then it just took on a whole different meaning. I think there's a beauty in that simplicity, and I thought the song really kind of explained that lifestyle and the beauty and the simplicity of it.” “She Ain’t Mine No More” “I wrote that song, I don't know, three, four years ago and recorded it and logged it and it almost made the last album. We decided to save it for this one. It's a song that reminds me of an old '90s Brooks & Dunn thing or something, kind of the way it moves and the structure of it, which I love. And melodically and, really, musically, I don't know that we've done anything very similar to that in our career.” “More Than Me” “‘More Than Me’ is probably my favorite song on the album, based on the subject matter and the way the song came about. I had a conversation with my daughter, who was eight or nine at the time, and she came home from school, talking about one of her little friends having boyfriend problems. And I'm going, ‘No, no, no, we're not going there yet. Give it a few, maybe 15 years.’ It was me and her just about, ‘Hey, there's plenty of time for that, for dating and all that good stuff. You better find somebody down the road, and you will, that loves you a whole lot. But I can promise you no matter how much they love you, they ain't ever going to love you more than I do.’ I tell them I love them every day, but for them to have this to go back and listen to long after I'm gone, it's pretty neat.” “Straight Outta the Country” “That song is pretty self-explanatory. I don't know, maybe a song like this can help you through a tough situation when you need to smile and just crank it up and roll the windows down. But it's the style of song that our fans have come to expect from us, and they've kind of been cornerstones of each of our albums.” “You Keep Getting Me Drunk” “This song may be the one we've had for the longest for this project. I know the songwriters are going, ‘Yeah, when the hell are they going to ever put this out on an album?’ But I loved the song the first time I heard it. We haven't done a ton of love songs. We've had a handful of hit records that were love songs, but I don't know that we've had a breakup type of ‘tears in my beer’ type of song that we've put out.” “We Didn’t Have Much” (Acoustic) “I don't believe we've ever had an acoustic version of a song on an album, if I'm not mistaken. The thing about ‘We Didn't Have Much’ and choosing to do it with that particular song is it kind of lends itself to that. Not only are the lyrics simple in that song, but the melody and the way it moves is pretty simple. It's actually more difficult to write a song that way, but I thought it was an opportunity to showcase the lyrics, even more so than on the original track.”