2. “ The Baby”
(Harley Allen/Michael White)

That Harley Allen sure knows how to break your heart, doesn't he? He and Michael White write with such honesty. This is just real life and sometimes that hurts. As far as my vocal goes, I approach all songs the same way – I just think about what they're talking about and try to put myself in the situation. I haven't lost my mother yet, but one of the things I was thinking about while I was singing was, “Someday I'm going to have to go through this.” The song forces you to think about that. And, yes, I am the baby.

3. “Asphalt Cowboy”
(Jeff Stevens/Kenny West)

The first time I listened to this, I just thought, “What a cool sounding song.” It was kind of different. Once I got into the lyrics, I really started getting excited, because it is about a trucker. And I can definitely put myself in that position because I'm on the road all the time. When that line comes about “50 feet of chrome and steel,” I always think about my bus.

4. “In My Heaven”
(Rivers Rutherford/Bobby Pinson)

I didn't realize this had been recorded before until I was in the studio. One of the musicians said, “Hey, I played on this for a Mark Wills album.” It made no difference to me, because I thought it was such a great song. It's got some politics in it, and I think you've gotta let some of that out every now and then. But it's all positive, any way you look at it. I'll tell you when it really had me. It was the line “the fish'll bite anything.” When I heard that line, I said, “That's it. We're in!” You know how I am about fishing.

5. “The Dreamer”
(Blake Shelton)

I sat down and wrote this about six months ago. It's about some things my fiancee and I went through. I've never actually written a song about my personal life before. I don't know how people are going to respond to it, but if anybody wants to know some of the things I've gone through, they can hear some of it in this song. In the past couple of years I've had the best time of my life and I've gone through the hardest times in my life, too. I just thought this was a statement that I needed to get out there.

6. “My Neck of the Woods”
(Blake Shelton/Billy Montana/Don Ellis)

Hank Williams Jr. is one of my major influences and I think you can hear that here. This is a song I begged and begged to have on my first album, but I just couldn't convince the record company. Now I'm glad it didn't make the first album, because I think it fits better on this one. Where I live, it takes forever just to get to it from the Interstate. This is about my neighbors. This is how they think. It may be a small group of people, but they're there and I think they deserve to hear something about themselves.

7. “Underneath the Same Moon”
(John Rich/Sharon Vaughn Bellamy/L. David Lewis)

This is a little bit more “progressive” than I've been so far. It doesn't sound like anything I've recorded before. And I think that's why I ended up singing it, to put some variety on the album. It's a country heartache message, but the song doesn't sound country. To be honest with you, I just think it sounds like a hit song. It's got a big, high vocal range and I wanted to give that a try.

Bobby Braddock has written some of the coolest songs ever, but I think this one is kind of underrated. It's just a brilliant, fun party song. And for my age group, it will be “new.” I'd never heard it before, but it was a Johnny Paycheck single in 1978, when I was still in diapers.

9. “Playboys of the Southwestern World”
(Neal Coty/Randy VanWarmer)

I've been doing this live for about a year, and people respond to it in a big way. That's one of the ones they scream for. They'd yell, “Hey Romeo!” It took me a minute to realize what they were talking about. I found the song three years ago when I was looking for things for the first album. The tape just had Neal Coty on guitar singing it, but it had so much energy and that's what we tried to capture in the studio. There's something special about this song. It's one of my favorites on this album.

10.“Someday”
(Bobby Braddock/Kathy Locke)

I think everybody at some point goes through a phase of “What is the meaning of life? Where am I going?” It happened to me while we were making this album. I was driving home and I heard that song “Too Old to Die Young.” It triggered something, and for the next two weeks I was just consumed by these thoughts. “Where did we come from?” “Where do we go?” I was so upset by it that it was to the point where I couldn't work. Right when I was going through this period, Bobby played me “Someday.” So many of the things in the song were the thoughts in my head. I hadn't even told anybody about all of this I was going through. So when I heard it, I thought, “I've got to record this. It just sounds like it was meant to be for me.”

Album cover courtesy of Warner Nashville.