Brett Eldredge‘s sophomore album Illinois was released today and the singer-songwriter says he “upped the ante” on this new album.

Brett co-wrote and co-produced all the tracks on the new album. The Illinois native had his home state in his heart and influences like Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Ronnie Dunn in mind as he made the album.

While Brett is becoming known for his crazy personality and fun loving attitude, he says he took making the new album seriously, “I take this job real serious in a certain way I mean I’m always having fun and I’m always goofing off, but I really want to do this for a long time. And so, I worked really hard on this album.”

He says he felt a little more pressure to make this album a step up from hid debut album Bring You Back, “I felt like I needed to step it up even more than the last record. It’s like I had three number ones, it was a really successful album now I gotta beat that I wanna make this ten times better than one and then the next album the same.”

Brett is working hard to create a long-lasting career for himself, “You know I always gotta improve my game and grow as an artist and this album I feel like is the best I’ve ever felt in the studio and the best music I’ve made to date and I’m really excited for everybody to hear it.”

I have listened to the new album Illinois from Brett Eldredge and it is, in my opinion, worth adding to your collection. Congrats Brett on a great new album!

By: Buck Stevens