What Makes You Country

On his sixth album, Bryan wants to bring us together. “Let me hit you with some hometown truth,” he sings in the album’s title track, before sketching a series of country cliches—cowboys, ploughboys, kids running through Georgia pines—linked by their Southern roots. “We’re all a little different, but we’re all the same/Everybody doin’ their own thing.” Through philosophical musings on faith and fatherhood (“Most People Are Good,” “Pick It Up”) he bids listeners—and, notably, his sons—to be open-minded: “I believe you love who you love/Ain’t nothin’ you should ever be ashamed of.”