The Only Way I Know

This David Lee Murphy and Ben Hayslip penned song finds Aldean collaborating with Luke Bryan and Eric Church, both of whom have toured with the Country star. "The three of us are friends, and I felt like this song, having a little attitude about it, just made sense for those guys," he told Billboard magazine. "Luke's not necessarily known for a lot of attitude, Eric is, but I thought having Luke come in on the verse he came in on fit him real well. I just thought it would be a cool moment on the record, us doing our thing. Luke's hot as can be, Eric's hot, having us all three on a song that made sense was a no-brainer. It started out with the idea of us three being on it, and once we got the green light, it was 'alright, this is gonna be pretty special,' and it turned out to be."

All three of the artists have a busy schedule, so the recording process took a lot of planning. Aldean explained to The Boot: "I cut my part of the song first, and then [producer Michael] Knox and I sat down and said, 'I think this would be a good part for Luke and then we could bring Eric in on this. You somewhat have it mapped out how you want it to go. We brought Luke in, he did his thing. I was there when he did his part."

Aldean was away touring when Church laid down his part after which he and Knox had the job of piecing together the three contributions. "You figure out what sounds best where, who sang this line better," he explained. "Make it where it doesn't sound like you're trying to give three guys a part when it sounds jumbled up. You want every part of it to kind of breathe a little bit. The listeners, you want their ears to have time to adjust and go, 'OK, that's Luke... that's Eric... that's Jason.' A lot of times you'll try things that don't work, and then you'll go back and try something else, until you finally dial it in. We had somewhat of an idea of how we wanted it to be before we ever got in there."

The song topped the Country charts, Aldean's seventh consecutive #1 and the eleventh of his career.

This won the Academy of Country Music award for Vocal Event of the Year. Eric Church also won Album of the Year for Chief at the ceremony.