For anyone looking to brand Jason Aldean as part of a significant musical movement, good luck. There’s a lot about the singer that’s become familiar during his five years as a country hitmaker, after all, he has spent more weeks at No. one on the radio charts than any other country artist in the last 12 months.

But none of what he does comes out quite like anyone else. The blues-tinged licks at the end of his phrases—there’s a ring of familiarity about them, but you can’t really link them to another artist.

The smoky guitar riffs that have become a signature—they’re built on sounds that have come before, but they don’t really belong to anyone else in the country genre, either. The small-town themes that pervade many of his songs—that’s all been done before, but not quite with the unwavering honesty that Aldean applies to the subject.