Thomas Rhett‘s Country Again – Side A comes out April 30th, and it already contains a number-1 hit, with “What’s Your Country Song.”

Now he’s released the title track, and it name drops a musical hero of Thomas’…Eric Church.

Eric chimed in on what he thought of the song — Thomas shares the text conversation the two had, “There’s obviously a line, about me and my buddies cranking Eric Church to 10, and he texted me and said ‘Hey man, I just wanted to say “Country Again” is great. Hope you and the family are doing well.’ And I said ‘Thanks a lot, it means a ton. Hope you don’t mind that I name dropped you.’ and he said ‘I’m honored.’ And that was full circle to me because he’s one of the biggest reasons, besides Merle Haggard, that I wanted to write songs in the first place. I remember being 16 years old and just being like ‘is there anyone better than Eric Church’ and I was the dude that my favorite songs were the b-sides or the album cuts, so, he’s always been somebody I looked up to as a songwriter. So, to have him kind of sign off on a song was very special to me.”

Thomas recently performed both songs, “What’s Your Country Song” and “Country Again” on the ACM Awards…

Photo Courtesy of Valory Music Co