Country singer Parker McCollum’s dreams all came true. A new self-titled album brought new ones

NEW YORK (AP) — Imagine you come from a small town in Texas and you have big dreams of being a country music star. Imagine those aspirations come true, tenfold: You win a couple Academy of Country Music Awards, a CMT Music Award and you have a couple platinum singles to your name. What’s next?

If you’re Parker McCollum, it’s new challenges. Surpassing his wildest expectations meant reveling in the carte blanche that follows — the freedom to do whatever you want. For the 33-year-old singer, that’s the release of his fifth full-length project, a self-titled album out Friday.

“I would hang my hat on this record seven days a week,” he says of the album. “It’s just the most focused I’ve ever been.”

He’s self-assured now, but the road to “Parker McCollum,” the album, wasn’t so steady. He originally recorded half a full-length with his longtime collaborator, producer Jon Randall. It wasn’t working. “I was comfortable,” McCollum says. “I was like, ‘I gotta go get as uncomfortable as I can.”’

So, he scrapped what he had, went to New York, worked with a new producer, Frank Liddell (Miranda Lambert, Lee Ann Womack, Chris Knight), and recorded what became the final album in a week.

“It sounds absolutely ridiculous when you say it out loud,” McCollum says. “That’s a crazy way to do it, but I think it worked.”

It helped that McCollum had most of the songs written. “I wrote ‘Permanent Headphones’ when I was 15. I wrote ‘My Blue’ in 2019. I wrote a lot of songs last year,” he says. Still, they cut “a couple songs a day.” He credits Liddell for pulling the best songs out of him, as well as New York’s industrious energy, for helping him realize the record.

“I’m glowing when I’m there,” he says of the city. “When I was in high school dreaming about being on a major label cutting records, you know, ‘It’s going to be in New York City and it’s gonna be … like a movie. And, you know, I just decided to try and actually do that.”

The album possesses that vigor, from the slow-building, John Mayer-esq. “New York Is On Fire” to more country-and-then-some fare: “Solid Country Gold,” “Sunny Days,” and “What Kinda Man.”

There’s also a spirited cover of Danny O’Keefe’s folk classic “Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues” with fellow Texan singer Cody Johnson, the album’s sole feature. “I’ve played that song my entire life,” McCollum says.

He thought, “That song is going to be cut at some point or another in my career. Might as well make it now.”

The narrative opener “My Blue” was the first song McCollum and Liddell recorded in the studio, and it was “a breeze,” as McCollum describes it, “And the worst thing happened that could have possibly happened.” They thought the rest of the process would be effortless, but that’s not how it goes. “It was just an absolute emotional grind for the next six and a half days. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

That led to experimentation, too. “I’ve always wanted to be a country singer. And the more that I listen to what I do, I’m like, ‘This doesn’t really sound like country music to me,’ which is hard to put your thumb on nowadays, of course, what country music really is. It’s just not as narrow as it used to be. But I’m like, I just don’t really even care anymore. You know, maybe I’m not a country singer. I don’t know. I don’t give a (expletive) anymore. Whatever it is that I do sound like, you know, that’s what I wanna do.”

As long as the songs “make you feel something.”

That’s something fans have long connected to, since the release of his debut, “The Limestone Kid,” a decade ago.

“It really eats at me to put out music that hits you where music hits me,” he says. “I really enjoy that chase and that journey of, ‘Am I going to write songs that are good enough?’ … I’m trying to find those answers.”