Jason Aldean is nominated for his fifth career Grammy Award heading into Sunday’s (April 3) Grammy Awards ceremony. He’s nominated for best country duo/group performance, for “If I Didn’t Love You,” his duet with Carrie Underwood.
Ahead of the awards ceremony, Aldean tells Billboard the nomination is validating for him as an artist.
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Though he’s notched 24 No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, had four albums reach No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart, and earned previous Grammy nominations for his albums Night Train and My Kinda Party (produced by his longtime producer Michael Knox), as well as nods for his recordings of “Dirt Road Anthem” and another duet, “Don’t You Wanna Stay” with Kelly Clarkson, a Grammy win remains an elusive goal.
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“The Grammys are something as musicians, we put on a pedestal. That means everything,” Aldean told Billboard. “Hell, Luke Bryan’s never been nominated for one, if that tells you anything. It’s so hard to get a nomination and so hard to win. It could be something really mainstream up against something really underground and just because it’s mainstream doesn’t mean it’s going to win. So for this song to get attention like this means so much.”
In March, the song was named single of the year at the Academy of Country Music Awards. While some artists of Aldean’s stature might discount awards recognition, it is something Aldean says means more to him now than it did earlier in his career.
“After being in the game this long, it means a lot, because it means we are still here, recording things that are getting people’s attention,” Aldean says.
He also recalled first hearing “If I Didn’t Love You,” and was thankful timing worked out to bring Underwood onto the song.
“When I heard that song, I felt like there was something different about it. My biggest concern was could we get her on the song? Because you never know if she is getting ready to drop a new single or something, and we just hit it where she had a little time,” he says. “Once we got her on it and I heard her sing on it, I knew it would be something pretty big.”
He quips that if he and Underwood win a Grammy for “If I Didn’t Love You,” this could be the start of a Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn-style string of duets.
“If we win a Grammy for this song, Carrie’s going to be on every album,” he says with a laugh. “If that’s all it took for me to win a Grammy, we’re doing another song next time.”
“If I Didn’t Love You” is featured on Aldean’s album Macon, Georgia. The singer has been rolling out songs from the 30-track album over the past year, and the project will release in its entirety on April 22.