Alan Jackson will return this spring with Where Have You Gone, his first studio album in six years and a collection of songs that he says are country through and through, even by his traditional standards.

“It’s a little harder country than even I’ve done in the past,” admits the country music legend. “And it’s funny, I was driving and listening to the final mixes that [producer] Keith [Stegall] sent me, and I started to tear up. I was surprised to get so overly emotional, but I just love this kind of music.”

Alan wrote 15 of Where Have You Gone’s 21 songs, including the title track, a forlorn meditation on the good old days of country music.

“Sweet steel guitar, oh how I’ve missed you / Words from the heart, let me hear you again,” he sings in the chorus of the ballad. “Sounds from the soul, fiddle, I need you / Sweet country music, where have you gone?”

Where Have You Gone will arrive in full on May 14 and is available for pre-order now. In addition to 20 original songs, the project’s final cut is a bonus track cover of “That’s the Way Love Goes,” a song originally written by Lefty Frizzell and Sanger D. Shafer and notably covered by Merle Haggard in 1983.

By Carena Liptak
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