Macon, GA · country · country-rock

Jason Aldean

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Rock-heavy country radio staple — big guitars, small towns, and one of the format's most reliable arena draws.

Jason Aldean was born Jason Aldine Williams in Macon, Georgia, on February 28, 1977. His parents separated when he was three, and his mother raised him in Macon while he spent summers with his father in Florida. His father taught him guitar chord by chord, and by fourteen Aldean was singing at the local VFW hall before working the fair and talent-contest circuit. He later adopted an alternate spelling of his middle name as a stage surname.

He moved to Nashville in the late 1990s and signed to what became BBR Music Group in 2005, the label that has released all eleven of his studio albums and forty of his singles since. His self-titled debut arrived that year, led by "Hicktown," a song that set the template of loud electric guitars, heavy drums and small-town subject matter running through his catalogue.

That combination made him one of the most-played artists on country radio through the 2000s and 2010s. Thirty of his forty-one singles have reached number one on Billboard's country charts, and several albums have been certified platinum or higher, including six-times-platinum My Kinda Party and double-platinum Night Train. He has picked up five Grammy nominations, twice for Best Country Album.

Among his best-known songs are "Big Green Tractor," "She's Country," "Dirt Road Anthem," an early example of the talk-sung, hip-hop-inflected style later labelled bro-country, and the duet "Don't You Wanna Stay" with Kelly Clarkson. His 2023 single "Try That in a Small Town" and its video drew widespread public argument over their imagery and politics.

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countrycountry-rock