Justin Moore‘s latest single, “Kinda Don’t Care,” is steadily climbing the charts. The song follows two chart-topping hits, “You Look Like I Need a Drink” and “Somebody Else Will,” which might make some artists feel pressure to keep the momentum going. Thankfully, Moore isn’t one of those artists.
“Early on in my career, I thought about it all the time. And you certainly want songs to do well, obviously,” Moore concedes to The Boot. “I’m fortunate that, if we miss on one, it’s not the end of the world, and my career’s not over, like it would have been on the first album … I used to be a chart watcher … [but] I realized a long time ago, you can’t control any of this …
“It’s much easier on you as an artist when you realize that, because you can go out and work your a– off and record the best music you can, and it’s either going to be a hit record or it ain’t going to be a hit record,” he continues. “There’s nothing more you can do after all that stuff’s done.”
“Kinda Don’t Care” is the title track of Moore’s fourth studio album, released in the summer of 2016, and possibly the last single from that record. The Arkansas native is working on his next set of tunes, for which he will once again get at least some of his inspiration from sunshine, sand and warmer weather.
“We recorded five or six of my songs on my first album down in Destin, [Fla.], where my wife and I have a house, and I wrote a lot of those songs down there,” Moore explains. “So I told my producer. [Jeremy Stover], ‘Man, in order to get a nucleus for the next album, why don’t we go back down there and do that?’ We did that when we didn’t have any money, when we didn’t have a pot to pee in. There’s a whole different vibe down there, and it breeds creativity.”
Sonically, Moore took some chances on Kinda Don’t Care, blurring the lines of his sound slightly. It was a risk that paid off, but his next record, he says, will go back to his roots.
“I want this to be the most country album I’ve ever recorded,” Moore reveals. “I stepped outside of my comfort zone on the last album, and it was fun … and I think it showed growth in me as an artist. But I think I realized along the way, I do traditional stuff. That’s what I do; that’s what comes out of me.”
An established songwriter, Moore has penned several of his own hits, including “Small Town USA,” “Bait a Hook” and “Til My Last Day.” Although he only wrote a couple of the songs on Kinda Don’t Care, he hopes to write more on his upcoming record — but if he doesn’t, that’s okay.
“I try not to think about it,” says Moore. “With the Kinda Don’t Care album, I went from writing 90 percent of what I did to only writing, I think, two or three songs on this album, because we went in a little different direction in some spots … I’ve never been a guy who says, ‘I need to write X amount of songs on this album or this album;’ I don’t believe that that’s fair to the fans. I pick the best songs. It’s my goal right now to write every single song on the next album I do, but if I only write one of them and we make a great album, I’ll be happy too.”
The timeline for Moore’s next record, he says, is up to the songs, not to him.
“You have to let the songs dictate that, in my opinion,” says Moore. “I kind of let the songs become the album. It sounds simplistic, but if we get really excited about some stuff, we may push it out a little faster.”
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This Article Was Originally Posted at www.TheBoot.com
