River House Artists/Columbia NashvilleJust as Luke Combs‘ debut album, This One’s for You, evolved into This One’s for You Too, today his sophomore effort, What You See Is What You Get, expands to become What You See Ain’t Always What You Get.  

If you suspect Luke had a plan all along — you’re right.

“Yeah, actually, I did…” he tells ABC Audio. “Once it came time for the second album, I kind of had an idea what I wanted to do. And I wanted to keep that kind of juxtaposing theme of the two albums and being similar, but also being different.”

In fact, it’s part of Luke’s vision to raise the quality of deluxe albums overall.

“I’ve always felt like personally that sometimes a deluxe edition of an album is just songs that…weren’t good enough to make the record,” he confesses. “I would get excited about, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to hear this deluxe edition.’ And then the songs wouldn’t be very good, in my opinion.”

So Luke’s made it his business to change that.

“Why can’t we take the deluxe edition and make it better?” he asks. “Why can’t we write new songs, go in, put the work in…and try to make them even better than the last album?”

It’s one leg of the CMA nominee’s journey toward hopefully one day claiming the Entertainer of the Year trophy.

“I always want to be moving forward, whether that’s musically or as a performer or songwriter or a singer. And so I’m always trying to get better…” Luke explains.

“I think that’s what we’ve done…” he adds. “There’s five songs on there: a couple that I’ve teased to folks, a couple that I’ve played live, and then a couple that nobody has ever heard. So I’m real stoked about it.”  

By Stephen Hubbard
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