The 31-year-old Hayes, who says he wants every one of his albums to feel like a different era, has always been one to buck conventions. “I’ve gone from being plugged into the system to building my own system.”

“It was a completely different way of thinking,” Hayes says excitedly of his approach to the new LP and, for that matter, his career moving forward. On his new album, Red Sky, the singer-songwriter is executing at the highest level of his musical career: crafting memorable melodies and instantly catchy hooks albeit with a top-notch musician’s discerning ear. It’s this new no-holds-barred mindset that’s resulted in some of Hayes’ most inspired music yet. Or, in other words, as Hayes succinctly puts it: “I’m creating my own rules to play by so I don’t have to play by anyone else’s.” Let’s start there.” Following a decade of playing by the rules and sticking to country music conventions, Hayes is, at last, doubling down on his ever-searching musical mindset: throwing genre conventions out the window, playing with “all the sounds” he’s influenced by, and, most importantly, trusting himself in his quest to lean into his pop and alternative rock influences. “I knew then I had to tap into whatever’s been put on my creative heart. “All of my favorite artists are the ones who went about their career making their own rules,” says Hayes, a rare and highly respected talent with a knack for authentic songwriting and for forging a true connection with his fans. A five-time Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist and the youngest male act ever to top the Billboard Hot Country song chart, Hayes was ready to lean into a mindset he’d always carried with him: that genres are fluid, and, in his eyes, the best musicians are the ones able to play with all sorts of sounds and styles. Of the necessity to follow a specific formula for his career.

Stone soup book by marcia brown