"I was going to a friend of mine's house," Aldean recalled during a Radio.com interview this spring in Nashville. "I stopped by the grocery store, and right about the time I went to get out of the car, I heard the kickdrum of the intro to 'Hicktown' come on the radio. I was excited, man. I jumped back in the car, shut the door, and just drove around the parking lot a little bit."

He remembers hesitating for a second, though, thinking that if people noticed that he was driving around the parking lot listening to his own song, that might be "kind of weird."

But he quickly also realized that fear was unrealistic. "I was a new artist," he said smiling, "so nobody knew who I was anyway. So it really didn't matter."