Jason Aldean Has This Rare Ability in Common With Toby Keith [EXCLUSIVE]

Jason Aldean and Toby Keith may have had more in common than you realize.

I've interviewed both country music icons on Taste of Country Nights over the years, and I had the good fortune of being able to ask the two men the same question.

Their answers are very similar, revealing that both artists got to a point few will ever achieve.

The Question: "Do you feel like you got to a point in your career where you could call your own shots at the record label?"

Most recently, I asked Aldean if he thinks he has reached that point in his career with the record label that he has been with since he first began releasing music, Broken Bow Records.

Aldean said, "Yeah, I feel like we've been there for a while. I remember it first happening with the My Kinda Party album because I went in — I don't think we played any songs for the label at all. I think my producer and I just went in and cut that whole album and when it was done, we just said, 'Here's your record.'"

When Did Jason Aldean Release His 'My Kinda Party' Album?

Aldean released My Kinda Party in 2010.

Aldean recalls it not sitting "too well with everybody at the label at first, but that album ended up doing so well that I think it gave me a little more street cred with the label, and from that point on it's just the same kind of thing."

READ MORE: The Top 10 Jason Aldean Songs – Country Music’s Most Important Modern Artists [No. 16]

Aldean has been the one to decide which songs get pushed as singles and which stay as album cuts for more than 15 years now.

I asked Keith this back in 2022 and he hit me with cold, hard facts as well.

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The "I Love This Bar" legend said, "The system got so easy for me. We were getting so much airplay back then (2001), and I had figured out who I was and what I did that I'd write an album and I would tell the promotions staff, 'Here's your four singles, go work 'em.'"

But the folks at Keith's then label, DreamWorks, didn't like that at first either.

"When I recorded 'Talk About Me,' the promotions staff came up on the bus and said, 'We wish you wouldn't go with this song, we think it will tarnish your career.'"

Keith recalled, "After arguing about five minutes, my manager just looked at them and said, 'You guys don't make yourselves look stupid on this.' It was a five-week No. 1."

He joked that after the fact, the same promotions staff acted like they forgot they had said that.

"They've got selective memory now but they're the reason for the season," Keith observed.