For the last several years, fans of more substantive songwriting have widely lamented the lack of quality songs at country radio, but veteran country star Aaron Tippin says that's finally beginning to change.

Bro-country has dominated radio trends so thoroughly that it's been difficult for songs that didn't have trucks, tailgates, booze and moonlight as their primary themes to gain as much exposure, and Tippin -- whose hits include 'You've Got to Stand for Something,' 'I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way' and 'Working Man's Ph.D' -- isn't sure he could have succeeded if he had been new to the country scene in that environment.

"Certainly country music went into an entirely different direction than what it was in the ’90s when I was having hits," he tells the Daytona Beach News-Journal. “It got to where it was about the beat instead of the lyrics. All of us out of the ’90s are all sitting around going, ‘Wow, I wish a great song mattered again,’ you know."

But he believes the pendulum is starting to swing the other way.

“I gotta say that here recently the industry seems like they’re trying to swing back. There are songs out there that are starting to have some life to them, have some meaning," he adds. "That’s the core of great country music -- it’s the songs.”

Tippin is currently working on a 25th anniversary album that will include 10 of his classic songs, 10 new songs and five diverse covers.

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