Luke Bryan Doesn’t Disagree With Blake Shelton, But Sticks With Album Process
A few artists, including Tim McGraw, have weighed in on Blake Shelton’s statement that he may stop making albums and just release songs. For Luke Bryan, he still believes in the album as a whole but he doesn’t disagree with Blake.
He told Taste of Country, “I think you have to approach recording music like you’re making an album. I think the beauty of making an album is that you’ll do eight, nine, ten songs and you’ll start seeing what you’re missing. I don’t disagree with Blake’s train of thought. I think I may marry the two.”
As for the number of songs, Bryan may pull back. He says, “I don’t know if like a 15, 16 — for a while that was the trend [Bryan’s last three albums had 15, 13 and 13 songs respectively, not including bonus tracks] … The only thing that worries me — even with What Makes You Country, my latest album — there are songs on there that are just wonderful songs that do get a little … lost in the mix. I think if we shrink the size of the albums and really focus on album size, you may in turn kind of make it that way.”
As for his upcoming new work Luke offers, “I don’t necessarily know if I have a theme. Typically I’ve always had stuff that does have pop, kind of real poppy stuff, but then if you listen to my whole album, the whole work, there’s obviously very country things on there. I think this album is leaning toward that. I’ve got some stuff that I’ve looked at, that I’m going into the studio to record that sounds very vintage-like, but then I’ve got some stuff that has some new and different sounds on it. I think I always kind of have to marry the two.”
He adds, “I’m not gonna have some album with every track is gonna have steel guitar on it, but do I have steel guitar on this album? Yeah.”