After a decade in the spotlight, Scotty McCreery has learned to trust his instincts -- and the 27-year-old admits he set the bar high when writing songs for his new album, Same Truck, released Sept. 17 via Triple Tigers. McCreery credits the pandemic with giving him extra time to craft songs he felt were strong enough to follow the three consecutive chart-topping singles on Billboard's Country Airplay chart from his fourth studio album, 2018's Seasons Change.

“We had a lot of an album ready to go before the pandemic and, if I’m being honest, I didn’t feel I was writing my best stuff -- I didn’t think I had a ‘Five More Minutes’ or a ‘This Is It’ here,” McCreery says of the No. 1 songs from Seasons Change. (“In Between” was his third chart-topping single from the album.) “A silver lining over last year is that I had that extra time to pick up a guitar and write songs. There were a lot of Zoom writes. We had a couple songs we wrote before that made the record, but most of this would be from the last year and half.”

It’s been a decade since the Garner, NC native won the 10th season of American Idol in 2011, and saw his debut album, Clear As Day, debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Scoring three consecutive No. 1 singles with , Seasons Change, took McCreery’s career to a new level and he admits working on the follow up was a little daunting. “I don’t know if it was scary -- more so that I’m a competitor by nature,” he tells Billboard. “I always want to set the bar for the next album. I want to set it even higher for myself, so I wanted to be writing the best stuff I could be writing, songs that mean something and come from a place in my heart that I care about. I’m super proud of the message in these songs and the perspective of this record."