Country singer Parker McCollum's dreams come true

Imagine you come from a small town in Texas and you have big dreams of being a country music star. Imagine those aspirations come true, tenfold: You win a couple Academy of Country Music Awards, a CMT Music Award and you have a couple platinum singles to your name. What's next? If you're Parker McCollum, it's new challenges. Surpassing his wildest expectations meant reveling in the carte blanche that follows-the freedom to do whatever you want. For the 33-year-old singer, that's the release of his fifth full-length project, a self-titled album out on Friday.

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"I would hang my hat on this record seven days a week," he says of the album. "It's just the most focused I've ever been." He's self-assured now, but the road to "Parker McCollum," the album, wasn't so steady. He originally recorded half a full-length with his longtime collaborator, producer Jon Randall. It wasn't working. "I was comfortable," McCollum says. "I was like, 'I gotta go get as uncomfortable as I can.""

So, he scrapped what he had, went to New York, worked with a new producer, Frank Liddell (Miranda Lambert, Lee Ann Womack, Chris Knight), and recorded what became the final album in a week. "It sounds absolutely ridiculous when you say it out loud," McCollum says. "That's a crazy way to do it, but I think it worked."