Alan Jackson named his new album Good Time, which is also an apt description for this time in his life.
The lanky, mustachioed country superstar’s latest album debuted this week at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top 200 and country albums charts, his fourth release to do so.

But it is the personal milestones that seem more significant to Jackson these days.
He turns 50 on Oct. 17. Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of his marriage to Denise, his high school sweetheart. Their three daughters, Mattie, 17, Ali, 14, and Dani, 10, are thriving (and the oldest is even, gulp, dating).

The family’s properties include a 24,000-square-foot Southern manor on 140 acres along the Harpeth River in Williamson County, a house on Center Hill Lake and a Florida vacation home. Jackson is no longer the only household member to top the charts: Denise’s first book, It’s All About Him: Finding the Love of My Life, debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times’ best-sellers list.

“It’s a wonderful time,” Alan Jackson said. “Denise and I, of course, are happier than we’ve ever been, and our children are all healthy and happy. It’s a fairy tale, it really is.”

It’s a life rich enough to make his thriving music career feel like a part-time job.
“It’s pretty much on cruise control other than when we make a new album, trying to come up with new material and recording. Other than that, I go out and play a few dates,” he said.

“I’ll be honest with you, after all these years, I don’t like going out and sitting on that bus. I have to leave the house at 5 o’clock Friday afternoon and fly to Idaho or something and my kids are out there cooking out on the grill and they’ll have a nice evening there. It’s hard to leave Nashville and go do that because that is where I want to be.”

Jackson reveals candid side

But it’s time for Jackson to get back to work promoting his new album. On this gray Monday, he took a few moments to relax on his bus after completing an exhaustive round of early-morning satellite radio interviews from a Music Row studio. Clad in white sneakers and blue jeans and swapping his cowboy hat for a baseball cap, Jackson could have easily slipped by unnoticed.

His public image is that of a shy, laid-back and easygoing man content to tinker with his cars and strum on his guitar. But that image, spurred on by his deep Georgia drawl and lack of fondness for interviews, is misleading. The real Jackson is also smart, quick-witted, strongly opinionated and sometimes stubborn. Behind that aw-shucks persona is a man who can hold his own on The View.

“I’m both,” he said of the contradicting descriptions. “I’m a driven person and I feel like I’m fairly intelligent, but I’m not educated at all. I didn’t have much of a formal education. At the same time, I am a very sensitive person and I’m not a selfish person. I try to think about everybody else around me in my family and the people that work for me.

“Everybody thinks I’m so shy and protective of my whole life. I don’t know that that is always true. . . . I’m a little shy around people I don’t know and big crowds. I get real anxious, and it’s mostly because I’m uncomfortable because I don’t know what to talk about with people.”

Jackson has maintained a low-key demeanor onstage, despite some early efforts to convince him to dance or abandon his guitar and walk around stage like Elvis Presley. For years, Jackson incorrectly thought Entertainer of the Year awards would elude him because “I just walk out there and sing.”
“I’ve never been comfortable onstage because I never did like being in front of everybody,” he said. “The guitar is something I felt like I could always hide behind. I’m not much of a dancer . . . As my girls have gotten older, if we see some young country guy looking all sexy and shaking around, they’ll say, ‘Daddy, I’m sure glad you don’t do that.’ ”

Jackson, the son of a Newnan, Ga., mechanic, began working after school at 12 and entered the used car business after high school. He married at 21, moved to Nashville in his mid-20s and landed a record deal when he was nearly 30. He said it’s this abundance of life experience that strengthens his songwriting.
“Since then, my life as a recording artist and celebrity, it’s unreal. It’s not normal after that. . . . I go to the grocery store about once a year. I lose touch with all the things that my fans are doing, everyday life things that they are just going through to get by. I’m totally out of touch with that, but at the same time, I think I had enough life experience that I can still stay grounded with that, I guess, and still have enough information there to continue to write songs that are simple and they can connect with.”

‘Just regular people’

Despite wealth and success, Jackson and his wife have faced some of the same relationship difficulties that have challenged other married couples. Denise Jackson candidly addressed them in her 2007 memoir, in which she revealed her insecurities, her lack of identity and details of the couple’s brief separation a decade ago. With Jackson’s permission, she revealed that he had been unfaithful.

“When she first brought the idea up about doing a book, I was a little anxious about what my fans might think,” he said. “But at the same time, I felt like the direction she was going with it and what she had to say was good. I think it showed people that I’m not perfect — I’m a regular guy. We’re just married people like anybody else.
“You grow up and learn from your mistakes, and if you want to make it work, you work hard at making it work.”

While reading the book, he was moved to tears. “I told Denise, ‘If they only read half the book, they are going to really hate me. You’ve got to get to the end of the book and then you might like me again.’ I was proud of the job she did on it and the way it was written. I felt that some people may see something there that is of value. I’m really a good, nice guy down deep. But Denise and I, it was hard.”

Jackson noted that today, fewer couples marry as young as they did, and some might not understand what it was like for the young lovers who resided in a small Georgia town. “People didn’t leave that town. They would marry somebody and have kids. For us to marry that young and not really know what love was. You weren’t grown up. You didn’t have a chance to live. You had never been anywhere.

“For us to survive all that, and then to add this celebrity lifestyle for 20 years on top of that, it’s a miracle we are here at all. It really is.”
Now, not only is he supportive — he wrote the forward for her book and a song that accompanied it, and he also tagged along on her national media tour — but he is also doting.

“My friends brag to other women, ‘He packs her picnics and puts hot water in her coffee cup in the morning.’ If anything, since our separation, he’s been the better spouse,” Denise said. “He is the most attentive, the most caring, the most sensitive.
“He was the star. He could have left and had thousands of other choices, but he made the choice that most men don’t make.
“He has been so brave and gracious to let me share that part of the story because it was important for people to know that was true and then see the process of forgiveness and rebuilding trust.”

Nothing left to prove

As part of the famed Class of 1989 on Music Row, Jackson was among the young guns who helped usher in the unprecedented sales boom in country. Nearly two decades later, it’s the next generation of artists, such as Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift, who are garnering massive sales and media attention. When Underwood toured with Jackson, she told him, “You were my first concert when I was 5,” which made him feel old. After all, it doesn’t seem that long ago that he was the newcomer meeting his 50-something idol, George Jones.

Jackson said it’s “pretty strange” to be middle age in country music.
“The funny thing is, when I would meet somebody who was older, they’d say, ‘I don’t feel that old.’ I don’t. I feel just like I did when I started. I’m older, and I can’t read up close as good as I used to, but I still feel like the same young guy who was making records back in the early ’90s.

“I turn 50 this year and I’m fine with it. I don’t try to hide my age or anything. I feel like I’m lucky to have lived this long, considering some of the years I’ve been through,” he said with a laugh.

With 31 No. 1 hits, worldwide sales of nearly 50 million and more Country Music Association award nominations than anyone else in history, Jackson no longer feels like he has anything to prove professionally.
“I feel like I’ve earned some respect as an artist, writer and singer,” he said. “I’ve tried to maintain a level of integrity . . .
“I’m not a perfect guy for sure. Denise’s book will tell you that. . . . I think I’ve grown up a lot . . . and learned how to be a good man. If I had to prove anything now, it would just be that.”

Alan Jackson, “Good Time”
History books often explain that country music is about Saturday night and Sunday morning. It’s about lust as well as faith. On his new album, Alan Jackson addresses matters of the heart, the soul and the loins.

Although co-writing is the standard practice in Nashville today, Jackson is the sole composer of all 17 tracks on “Good Time.”

Fans won’t be surprised to hear Jackson sing about religious faith on this CD. But Jackson’s 13th studio album offers something new from him — a touch of naughtiness. In the double-entendre-laced “Country Boy,” the protagonist urges, “Climb in my bed and I’ll take you for a ride.” In “Nothing Left To Do,” Jackson sings about a couple who will “use different names” in the bedroom to spice things up. “Laid Back ‘n Low Key (Cay),” another song about a long-term couple, features a dude who enjoys the sight of the “sun reflecting off that tan on your breast.”

These few corporeal comments are complemented by a slew of sentiments about being steadfast and remaining faithful, both to God and to one’s partner. At 71 minutes, this is a long CD, but there’s hardly any filler here. The musicianship is superior throughout, with flavoring provided by crisp mandolin runs, aching pedal steel guitar and even a quirky jaw harp in the title track.

Jackson triumphs alongside Martina McBride on the upbeat duet “Never Loved Before,” gets nostalgic for the 8-track era with “1976” and shows his bluegrass acumen with the indelible “Long Long Way.”

In the closing track, he asserts that if Jesus were around today, he’d be sporting a tattoo of a cross. Listeners don’t necessarily have to agree with every aspect of Jackson’s world view in order to appreciate his artistry, but it probably helps. Jackson’s discography already includes a few country classics, and this disc is yet another one.

Bobby Reed

ROCK:
Shawn Mullins, “Honeydew” (Vanguard)
Atlanta singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins, who scored a top 10 hit a decade ago with “Lullaby,” changes from cool, laid-back alt-rocker to a storyteller with plenty to say right before our ears with “Honeydew.” The album is filled with vignettes of places that Mullins has visited or created and characters who’ve crossed his path. It has a deep personal meaning, without the lame sentimentality that often afflicts such projects.
He has assembled a crack studio team, including guitarist Peter Stroud, on hiatus from Sheryl Crow’s band, and vocalist Francine Reed, who backed up Lyle Lovett early in his career. The best songs are “Cabbagetown,” about a cotton mill on its last legs, and “Homeless Joe,” an ode to a street musician. The sound is minimalist and gimmick-free, all the better for Mullins to spin his yarns.

Jeff Johnson

SOUL-BLUES:
Al Basile, “The Tinge” (Sweetspot)
This early disciple of East Coast guitar wizard Duke Robillard has been in the business for 35 years, starting as the first trumpet player for the revered swing ensemble Roomful of Blues. Basile’s last album, 2005’s “Blue Ink,” was wall-to-wall Robillard, who served as producer and axman.
His new disc, “The Tinge,” has a Roomful swing-time feel to it, not surprising considering half the band’s original lineup is on board. The album showcases Basile’s prowess on the cornet and as a songwriter, with “Not the Wrong Woman” and “Too Slow” among the more recognizable tunes he rehashes.
The album also harkens back to the Kansas City swing era, with Basile using his early experiences working for Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Joe Turner. It’s a smoky, back-room vibe that makes you want to get up and dance — or take up tobacco again.

Jeff Johnson

PUNK-ROCK:
The Loved Ones, “Build and Burn” (Fat Wreck Chords)
Philadelphia punk rockers The Loved Ones tear into “Pretty Good Year” with amps set to 11, and their energy builds and burns for 33 minutes. The album’s “build and burn” concept is first captured in “The Bridge,” which describes a tendency to struggle toward creation of lasting monuments to ourselves, while the human bonds that truly make a life deteriorate. Later during “Brittle Heart,” ragged and powerful vocalist David Hause confesses to destruction by neglect of such a relationship. “You built me up inside your brittle heart,” Hause howls, “but I just burned down everything.”
At least one band spouse contributes background singing to the track, suggesting that the guys may fare better than the characters they imagine. “Louisiana” is a righteous anthem for reconstruction and solidarity that would have made folk hero Woody Guthrie a “populist punk” believer. The song features a guitar solo from guest Tad Kubler of The Hold Steady. New bassist Chris Gonzalez adds a richness to rockers like “The Inquirer” that wasn’t present on the band’s 2006 effort, “Keep Your Heart.” His vocal harmonies augment the strength of a band with a better melodic sense than most in its genre.

Jeff Elbel

ROCK:
Mike Doughty, “Golden Delicious” (ATO)
With songs like “Navigating by the Stars at Night,” former Soul Coughing frontman Doughty again creates oblique word pictures where consonants and cadence are subservient to the beat. Though his lyrics remain consistently crafty, they’re just as often inscrutable. “I wrote a song about your car. I wrote it with your hips in mind,” he deadpans during “I Wrote a Song About Your Car.”
Doughty is a shade less impressionistic during “Fort Hood,” named for the Texas Army base sustaining the most casualties in Iraq. He imagines war’s collateral damage upon friends, family, and children. “You should still believe in an endless world,” he tells a bereaved teenager, mourning her lost innocence.
Former Cake drummer Pete McNeal offers the perfect combination of slacker pop and ramshackle funk on “Put it Down,” accented by Doughty’s percussive rhythm guitar and John Kirby’s sparkling electric lounge-piano. Though it plays to the organic strengths of Doughty’s live band, “Golden Delicious” falters more than 2005’s lushly produced “Haughty Melodic.” A mocking synthesizer solo (a la Van Halen’s “Jump”) quickly wears out its welcome during the otherwise grooving “27 Jennifers.”

ALAN JACKSON, one of this era’s most successful country singers, spent a recent Thursday night at the mall. To be more precise, in a theater inside the upscale shopping complex called the Factory, just south of Nashville in Franklin, Tenn.

About a hundred fans had been summoned to hear him sing songs and answer questions for a special that would be broadcast on CMT, the country-music cable channel. (The questioners were vetted and selected; before Mr. Jackson arrived a CMT host told fans who hadn’t been chosen not to bother raising their hands.)
Mr. Jackson will be 50 this year, and he presents himself as an old-fashioned star: a hard-working show-business professional who would rather sing than talk and rather go fishing than do either. (If this is a put-on, it’s a convincing one.) But he tried his best to look comfortable while batting away softballs.

Did he have any preshow rituals? Indeed he did. “I gargle hot salt water, and then I drink apple cider vinegar,” he said. “About a quart.” There was a moment of silence before he chuckled and added, “I’m just kidding.” Next question?

After nearly two decades of multimillion-selling albums, Mr. Jackson is part of the country music establishment, one of the most reliable hitmakers in a genre with more than its share of them. Like Toby Keith (46) and Reba McEntire (52) and the indefatigable duo of Brooks & Dunn (which will turn 108, collectively, this year), Mr. Jackson is a blue-chip veteran who seems able to churn out Top 10 hits indefinitely. He has been inspired in part by the example of his friend and occasional duet partner, George Strait, 55, whose has been topping the charts for more than a quarter-century with hardly any dry spells. ( “I Saw God Today,” Mr. Strait’s new single, recently made its debut at No. 19 on Billboard’s country chart, his highest debut so far.)

This hospitability to established acts is part of what makes country music unique and, these days, uniquely profitable. The Nashville establishment is still pretty good at rewarding great singers and great songwriters. Mr. Jackson can be both, and his long, consistent career is just about unimaginable in any other genre.
Since 1990, when he first broke through, Mr. Jackson has been known as a crowd-pleasing honky-tonk hero, lumped in, by fans and detractors alike, with the so-called hat acts. (The signature Alan Jackson sound is old-fashioned but slick, a combination that tends to drive country purists nuts.) His résumé includes a dozen regular albums, two Christmas CDs and a fistful of compilations. The CMT special he was taping, “Alan Jackson: Invitation Only,” is scheduled to have its premiere next Saturday. And on March 4 he releases a new album, “Good Time” (Arista Nashville); the first single, “Small Town Southern Man,” has already ambled into country’s Top 10.
The day before the taping Mr. Jackson could be found nearby, at the home he shares with his wife and his three daughters, ages 10, 14 and 17 (although “home” seems too modest a word for a property that includes a lake, a field formerly used as an airstrip and a cluster of houses). Sitting in his hangar-size garage, which is stuffed with gleaming muscle cars and career souvenirs (a neon sign reading “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow,” an early single; large-type lyrics to “Drive,” from 2002), he sounded typically matter-of-fact as he described the new CD. “I wanted to go and make a really good country album, reminiscent of the albums I’ve always made,” he said. A more demonstrative fellow might have shrugged.

But anyone who has been following Mr. Jackson’s career knows that his forthrightness conceals a mischievous streak. He has spent the last few years cheerfully confounding the expectations of listeners who had grown used to a steady diet of drinking and love songs. Early in 2006 he released “Precious Memories,” an album of gospel standards meant as a gift for his mother; it became an unexpected hit, selling more than a million copies. Later that year came “Like Red on a Rose,” which was produced by Alison Krauss; that CD was conceived as a bluegrass album, but somewhere along the line it morphed into a subtle and sly collection of grown-up love songs.

So here comes “Good Time,” which has widely been described as a back-to-basics move, his first straight-up country album since 2004. (A headline on a recent cover of Country Weekly magazine promised to explain “Why Alan Jackson Returned to His Roots.”) And as is often the case with Mr. Jackson, the truth is a bit more complicated. In its own way, “Good Time” is just as audacious as what came before. It has 17 songs (a lot for a country album), and it is the first album of his career that has only one name — his — in the songwriting credits. But to hear him tell it, that’s no big deal. He says he wound up having lots of songs, so he used ’em.

Mr. Jackson grew up in Newnan, Ga., and he moved to Nashville in 1985, just as Randy Travis and other neo-traditionalists were finding huge success by declining to compete with pop stars. Like many country stars, he had a publishing deal before he had a recording contract. He finally released his debut album, “Here in the Real World,” in 1990, and it was a smash, spawning four Top 5 country hits. Although Mr. Jackson sings ballads beautifully, he became known for playful songs like “Gone Country” (a gentle and startlingly prescient jab at Nashville carpetbaggers), “Don’t Rock the Jukebox” (a cunningly uptempo song about a guy in a downtempo mood) and “Chattahoochee” (which begins, infectiously, “Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee/It gets hotter’n a hoochie-coochie”).

He doesn’t deny getting sick of the tried-and-true. “Certain songs had a similar feel or similar guitar intro,” he said. “And when you’d kick them off onstage, you’d have to think, ‘O.K., which song are we playing?’ ” At times he seemed to be succeeding on reputation alone, as in 2000, when he managed to nudge a malformed U.R.L. — a wisp of a song called “www.memory” — up the chart.

People who are not country fans might have been surprised by Mr. Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning),” a post-9/11 song that resonated in part because it was so restrained, as if he couldn’t bring himself to do much more than sigh. But longtime listeners already knew that his versatility was related to his seeming stoicism: chuckling at heartbreak or shrugging through a love song, he tempts listeners to imagine all the things he’s not expressing.
There’s no question that Mr. Jackson is a country kingpin, respected even by the impatient young singers who complain that the country industry relies too heavily on proven hit makers like him. But outside the world of country music, Mr. Jackson is often viewed less respectfully, not as an American original but as a Nashville clone.
Mainstream country singers like him are routinely written off or ignored by listeners and critics who claim to champion the real thing. No profile of a quirky singer-songwriter or an aging pioneer is complete without a lazy swipe at the supposed intolerance of the Nashville plutocracy or the cravenness of country-radio programmers.
The truth is that country remains one of America’s most vital commercial radio formats, driven by a singularly weird mix of teenagers and parents of teenagers, pop melodrama and old-school stoicism. (The loyalty of older, nondownloading listeners may help explain country’s relatively healthy sales figures.) And the genre’s obsession with tradition clashes in unexpected and interesting ways with its need for glamour and novelty.

Like many country-music success stories Mr. Jackson has criticized the genre — in “Murder on Music Row,” a duet with Mr. Strait, he sang, “The almighty dollar and the lust for worldwide fame/Slowly killed tradition, and for that someone should hang” — while also learning to play by its rules. He is a self-styled maverick but also a skilled craftsman who knows he has a job to do. In a city where the words “artist” and “entertainer” are used interchangeably, it helps to be flexible.
Mr. Jackson’s flexibility may have been tested last year when his wife, Denise Jackson, published “It’s All About Him: Finding the Love of My Life” (Thomas Nelson). It’s a graceful book about how their marriage, which began in 1979, was saved by her renewed Christian faith (that “Him” isn’t a “him”), and it found its way to the top of the New York Times best-seller list.

She reduced the juicy parts to a five-word sentence, putting the matter plainly without divulging any details: “Alan had not been faithful.” Asked about the book, Mr. Jackson said, “We’re as happy as we’ve ever been.” But Ms. Jackson’s conclusion in the book, though optimistic, is more bittersweet. The final chapter is called, “Happily Ever After, Even When We’re Not.”

If the added scrutiny changed Mr. Jackson’s approach to songwriting, he’s not fessing up. “Good Time” is a handsome and slightly shaggy album, starting with that well-burnished first single, “Small Town Southern Man.” The lyrics are a moving tribute from one old-school paterfamilias to another. (In the video Mr. Jackson sings through the decades; the clothes change but the music stays gratifyingly steady.) And “Long Long Way” upholds the venerable tradition of deceptively cheerful bluegrass. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen so many shades of blue,” Mr. Jackson sings as a mandolin goes scampering by.

One of the few low points is “Country Boy,” a mildly suggestive bit of nonsense about giving a woman a ride. (It could have been worse, or maybe better; he says his wife vetoed the original lyrics as “too risqué.”) But mostly the album is a joy, well made and packed with the clever musical details that make Mr. Jackson’s best music so satisfying.

“I Wish I Could Back Up” is a beautiful and rueful love song that may send listeners running for their copies of his wife’s book. But instead of the expected string section, Keith Stegall, Mr. Jackson’s longtime producer, added an accordion line, giving the song a faint hint of the exotic.
And when Mr. Jackson talked about “I Still Like Bologna,” a half-serious ode to the good old days, the car mechanic in him came out. “We stripped that song down to nothing,” he said. “It’s got clean tick-tack bass, along with an upright.” Runs pretty good.

Onstage in Franklin on the next night, he took “I Still Like Bologna” out for a test drive, and he seemed pleased when his fans, most of whom hadn’t heard it before, chuckled in the right places. His folksy disinclination to take himself seriously creates an illusion of intimacy while also keeping listeners at arm’s length. It may also explain how he has lasted so long and aged so well. When the song was over, he looked up and cracked half a smile. “That was touchin’, wudnit?”