Toby Keith Not Changing Anything on New Album

Messing with a successful artist's formula is dangerous stuff. And while Toby Keith is known as one of country's biggest badasses, he's not exactly champing at the bit to switch up the sound that's gotten him this far.

The "Red Solo Cup" partier/elder bro statesman/respected musician will bless us with a new album in 2015, but by his account, it won't be revolutionary.

"I mean, on the skeleton part of the business side, you may have to do it different, the more digital it gets," he told CMT Hot 20 Countdown. "But it's not gonna change anything about the way we get to the product or getting it out. They may deliver it differently, but as far as manufacturing and getting it to an album, nothing will change there."

Leave it to an anecdote about his new single "Drunk Americans" to get that point across.

"When we finished the song [two years ago], we said, 'This would we be so great for Toby Keith,'" songwriter Brandy Clark told Rolling Stone. "And then he passed on it. Then he came back around to make another record, and the guy at my publishing company pitched it again — after the record was done — and they heard it and said, 'Oh, he's got to go in and do this.'"

Main point: Keith has etched himself a place in the "let's crack open a beer" category of country. But Clark had bigger ambitions for the cut.

"You see that title and you think, 'Oh, it's a drinking song,' which it is, but I hope that people can listen to it and see that it's really an American song," she said. "We wanted to write it sort of like a modern-day 'Piano Man.' It's like, 'When we're in here drinking, who cares what we are outside of this?'

Check out the album preview below:

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