The Jason Aldean of 2024 is a megastar with more than 25 No. 1 songs to his name and awards statues that require multiple mantels.

But it wasn’t always shiny and easy.

Aldean had a tooth-and-nail climb to success, and it was often dark, he recalls in a new interview with Taste of Country Nights: On Demand.

Before “Hicktown” became a hit, he says it was really bad.

“I was starving, I had a brand new 𝚋𝚊𝚋𝚢. My oldest daughter had just been born, I didn’t have any money,” Aldean remembers. Daughter Keeley Ann Williams was born in 2003.

“I wasn’t thinking longterm. It was like, ‘I need to get this song going just so I can generate some money to, like, keep from losing my house and to be able to buy diapers.’ Those kind of things.”

He worked hard to provide, but never could have imagined how far his star would rise.

“For it to turn into what it has, I never … I dunno, maybe I was just kind of naïve to the point of thinking that it could ever become this.”

Truly, he was just trying to survive day to day. He’d go on to sign a record deal with his longtime label home Broken Bow Records in 2005, releasing his debut album and debut single, “Hicktown,” that year, too.

“I was very much small potatoes, going, ‘I need to make 5 grand, so I need to make 5 grand today somehow, how does this happen?’ It was more like survival,” Aldean admits.But in 2024, a now 47-year-old Aldean can’t even count his studio albums on his fingers, and he lost the ability to count his hits long ago. He’s remarried and has four kids now, 3 girls and a son, and he has no plans to retire from music, despite being quite comfortable.