“In this day and age everybody is not cutting full-length albums anymore. It’s trending more towards these EPs and that’s just not the way I want to make music,” Aldean tells Billboard as he leans forward on a red leather sofa in a Music Row recording studio, peering intently from beneath his trademark cowboy hat. “I grew up loving it when my favorite artist would come out with a new album. I had to get the new record, read all the liner notes, see who was playing on what and who wrote the songs. I was always a fan of getting a hold of the physical copy of the record, and if I waited a year or year and a half on my favorite artist putting out an album, I wanted a full album. So I feel like if we wait a year and a half in between records, I want it to be worth the wait for fans.”