Brett Young Added a Woman’s Perspective to His No. 1 Hit ‘In Case You Didn’t Know.’ Listen to the New Spin (Exclusive)

Brett Young knew marriage and fatherhood would change him — but he never expected how much it would change his songwriting.

“I’ve always been hell bent on being in the moment with everything that I write about, but I had a realization in the middle of writing the last record that being married and starting a family kind of changes what you can and can’t do in that world,” reflects Young, 44, in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE.

He admits with a laugh, “I had to stretch myself or I would have had a lullabies record in no time!”

And while the idea of lullabies delivered by the velvet voice of this country heartthrob is certainly intriguing, Young is serious when he says he made a conscious effort to push himself creatively on his brand-new album 2.0, which released Friday, June 20.

“In terms of my songwriting, I knew I would have to either dig back to my past or write somebody else’s story,” explains Young, who has served as co-writer on some of his biggest hits such as “Mercy,” “Sleep Without You” and “Here Tonight.” “I had to write to topic rather than experience a little bit more.”

Young admits that he did begin this stretching process over the course of his 2023 record Across the Sheets, but 2.0 took it to a whole new level.

“I was able to tap into every experience, feeling, and emotion, and still make it feel authentic and connected,” says Young, who’s currently out on his Back to Basics World Tour, performing his latest single, “Drink with You,” for his ever-loyal fanbase.

Coincidentally, the much-needed stretch of his songwriting muscle ultimately led Young back to one of his greatest hits — 2017’s “In Case You Didn’t Know.”

“I wanted to put the female perspective to it,” says Young of “In Case You Didn’t Know 2.0.” “For the longest time, I knew we had the story about how men are bad at expressing their feelings. But I mean, that tale is as old as time. And if that’s really true, how do we keep getting women to be with us?”

Enter vocalist Hannah McFarland, who ended up coming in and not only collaborating with Young on the song but actually writing the female perspective to the No. 1 song.

“Hannah did a great job lending the perspective of, ‘Yeah, maybe you guys don’t say it, but you do these things, or you have these looks or you give us those things in other ways,'” says Young. “I just wanted to represent both sides.”

But while Young pushed himself in new directions, there are songs on the new record that bring fans back to his own endearing story.

“‘Full House’ is special,” Young explains of the endearing song he wrote alongside Ross Copperman and Jon Nite.

“Me and my wife [Taylor Mills Young] were sure that we wanted four kids, but then we had this really overwhelming emotional experience bringing [our younger daughter, 3½-year-old] Rowan home from the hospital. Suddenly, we felt like our family was full with two children. Rowan’s existence in our life was so powerful that it kind of changed our plan for us as a family and completed us.”

(The couple, who married in 2018, are also parents to daughter Presley, 5½.)

It’s an inner peace not only reflected in the song but reflected in Young’s demeanor as of late. “There’s a lot of people that aren’t lucky enough to have reached that point in their life where they feel, ‘This is our family unit, this is the plan and moving forward we protect this and this is what we take care of,'” explains Young. “I think to some people that can seem like it comes with this negative side where there’s now nothing new to look forward to.”

But for Young, it’s the total opposite. 

“There are no more unknowns,” he says quietly. “There are no more new variables. This is what it is.”

Despite this, uncertainty can creep in — a feeling that ultimately resulted in Young sitting down with Jon Nite and Kyle Schlienger to write the touching and insightful “Who I Do It For.”

“As much as that song shows me at my most vulnerable side, it’s also about me hoping that at some point the kids are old enough to understand why I had to be gone so much,” says Young of the song that has him joining voices with country icons Lady A. “Being gone and on the road is difficult , but it is for the greater good of my family that I’m doing all of this. It doesn’t make it easy just because you know why you’re doing it, but it does make you able to put your head down and push through it.”