INTERVIEW: Dustin Lynch Details His New Album 'Current Mood' | iHeart (2023)

What's your current mood? LetDustin Lynchtell you -- that's the title of his third studio album. Current Moodfollows 2014's sophomore LPWhere It's At, and features 13 new songs, including Dustin's current single "Small Town Boy," as well as other previously released tracks like "Seein' Red," "Why We Call Each Other," and "Love Me Or Leave Me Alone."

Dustin has spent the last three years, since the release of Where it's At, putting his heart and soul into Current Mood. He explains to iHeartRadio, "It's an album that I've put three years of literally every waking moment into. I've obsessed over every single song on this record and I think every single song has a special spot. I think it's definitely my strongest work to date, and that's a good feeling. It's kind of a sense of relief. There's not really a whole lot of what if's. I love this album so much."

Current Mood is a collection of songs inspired by many personal topics for Dustin, who describes the album a "peek behind a curtain." He tells us:

"There's really no filter on any of these songs, and so there are a lot of heart breaks, a lot of hookups, lot of 'gettin' over you' songs, a lot of finding love, a lot of making love. It's a pretty sexy album. It really is an album, if I step back and I go, 'Wow, this is an album about relationships.' That's what it is. And, that's a good thing. It's all the in betweens, all the highs, the lows that you get whenever you start finding yourself kind of gravitating toward someone. And then for me, the inevitable happens. That ends. So, that's really what album three is, and what every song on this album is about."

Speaking of all of the emotions that are touched upon in Dustin's new album, the country singer/songwriter explains how that plays into naming the album Current Mood. He says, "It's a look behind the curtain of the last three years of relationships, and travels. And with those relationships, the ups, the downs, the sideways, the uppercuts, whatever you wanna say, it's a lot of different smiles, a lot of different frowns, some tears, and emotions. So, each moment on this album is a different emotion, it's a different mood. And whatever kind of mood that a listener's in, I think they can find a song on this record that really speaks to them, and makes them feel something."

Out of Current Mood, comes "Small Town Boy," which is Dustin's fastest rising single of his career. The song was written by Rhett Akins, Ben Hayslip, and Kyle Fishman (on one of Luke Bryan's tours, no less), and which Dustin heard on Thanksgiving a few years ago.

"I was off the road, and headed down to Tennessee, and I got an e-mail. And I heard the song, and I remember thinking, 'I cannot wait to get back in the truck, and listen to that song, and it was unbelievable. A few of my buddies wrote 'Small Town Boy' on Luke Bryan's 'Farm Tour' and sent it to me right away, and it was just something I fell in love with. I fell in love with it because it speaks of true love. It speaks of that love we all look for in life, and when we find it, we hang on as long as we can to it. And I think that's why everybody's related so well to it. It means a lot to me because I'm from a small town, but more than that, it's got a deeper meaning about true love."

For Dustin, there were many special moments for him throughout the album, one of them being his single "Love Me Or Leave Me Alone." Lynch recorded the song in the same studio that he recorded "Cowboys and Angels" from his debut album. He explains:

"There's just this moment in the studio where the musicians that play on multiple records a week all stop and you can just tell, 'Holy cow, we have something special.' A few of those moments in the studio that I can remember we recorded 'Love Me or Leave Me Alone' in the same exact studio we recorded 'Cowboys and Angels' because it just has that ... the studio, Ocean Way here in Nashville, has that familiar, epic feel. And we found it in there a couple times. We did it again with 'Love Me or Leave Me Alone.' I'm comfortable in that studio when it comes to big-message songs, and big moments, and 'Love Me or Leave Me Alone' is definitely probably my favorite moment on the album."

Dustin tells us of the meaning behind the single, "'Love Me or Leave Me Alone' is a song about the line we all have to decide if we want to cross or not in a relationship. It's a song that speaks to that line of are we going to be something serious? Are we going to be more than a hookup? Are we going to be more than just dating? Are we going to be more than just Facebook official? I love the heartbreak of the song, and the emotion it makes me feel, it punches me right in the gut every time."

Dustin tells us that he's thrilled, after three years, to have finally released Current Mood. He explains:

"A couple of these songs we've had for three plus years, and so to finally get those out is amazing. The fact that they're still around and I'm excited about them after three years ... I've written hundreds of songs, I've listened to literally thousands of songs over the past few years, and the fact that a couple of these have stood the test of time, and me maybe getting over them and falling out of love with them, I think it just speaks volumes for how solid they are."