Jason Aldean officially kicked off his Full Throttle Tour over the weekend, and joined Rob + Holly during the Friday Night Takeover to talk about crafting the setlist, and more.
LISTEN NOW: Friday Night Takeover with Jason Aldean
"I think each year we try to go in and maybe take some songs out that we were playing last year and put in some songs we weren't playing last year," Aldean shares about the setlist. "I think each year it's kind of playing around with those things and, you know, obviously you wanna have as many hits in there as you can and things you think people want to come out and see. Each time we make a new album, you're adding those songs in and then the old ones are kinda taking some out, putting some of the old ones back in, and so, I think we got a pretty good set list for this year and some of the new stuff, some of the old stuff, and it's gonna be fun."
"We've done this long enough to know which songs are gonna be the ones that strike a chord with everybody," Jason admits. "It's kind of one of the fun things for me is to sit down and kind of piece all that stuff together and figure out what it looks like for this year."
There's a lot of songs in competition for "hits people want to see," as Aldean has notched 29 over his career. "I mean, hell, I just wanted to have one, I just wanted a number one just to say that I had one and we got one on the first album, my second single went number one, and then we released the sophomore album and didn't have another one," Aldean reveals. However, once album number three came out, the faucet was turned on for the artist of the decade. "I think for me, it was never a numbers game. It was more of, 'hey, let's go do this as long as we can,' and you know, I feel like when you're a musician, it's kind of like a gig you never really retire from. As long as you can sing and play guitar and you know, you may not be doing it in a stadium, but it's not really something you retire from."
"It's just like one day you turn around and you're like, 'oh, I got five number ones. I got ten, I got fifteen, twenty,' and then, you know, here we're staring down thirty and it's pretty wild."
"We came out in 2005, [that] was my first year that we kind of hit and you know, this is twenty years for us. So it's been twenty years' worth of, putting records out and going out and promoting them and watching them climb and so it's, you know, twenty-nine number ones over twenty years is, it's been pretty good."
Hear more from Jason Aldean on award shows, family life, and working with John Morgan during the full Friday Night Takeover interview above.