LISTEN: Jason Aldean + Carrie Underwood’s ‘If I Didn’t Love You’

Jason Aldean and Carrie Underwood‘s “If I Didn’t Love You,” is a midtempo duet full of heartache. Both sides of this former relationship are having trouble moving on — because each still loves the other.

“If I didn’t love you, I’d be good by now / I’d better than barely gettin’ by somehow,” Aldean and Underwood sing in harmony in the chorus. “Yeah, it would be easy not to miss you / Wonder about who’s with you / Turn the want-to off whenever I want to / If I didn’t love you.”

Aldean leads the first verse, while Underwood takes the second; later in the song, they trade lines back and forth, revealing their similar feelings of heartbreak. Press play below to hear the brand-new song, released on Friday (July 23):

Kurt Allison and Tully Kennedy, two of Aldean’s band members, co-wrote “If I Didn’t Love You” with John Morgan and Lydia Vaughn. It helped fill a hole on Aldean’s next album, he tells Apple Music Country host Kelleigh Bannen, even if it came late in the game.

“We’d kind of thrown around the idea of doing a duet, but we really didn’t have the song, and we were trying to force it with other songs,” Aldean shares. “They just kind of went in one day to try and write, and this is what they came up with. We had already gone in and tracked most of the album; this thing kind of came at the last minute …”

In fact, when Aldean and company recorded “If I Didn’t Love You,” he didn’t have a duet partner picked out — he decided he’d figure that part out later. The first person he asked was Underwood, “and she just kind of had this spot in her schedule where it fit perfectly.”

Aldean has never been one to shy away from duets and collaborations. Previously, he’s sung with Miranda Lambert (“Drowns the Whiskey”), Kelly Clarkson (“Don’t You Wanna Stay”), Kelsea Ballerini (“First Time Again”), Tyler Farr (“Damn Good Friends”), Ronnie Milsap (“Prisoner of the Highway”), Luke Bryan and Eric Church (“The Only Way I Know”), and even rapper Ludacris (“Dirt Road Anthem Remix”). He says singing with other artists — he specifically mentions Underwood and Clarkson — gives him an even greater appreciation for their talent.

“When you get onstage or in the studio and start trading vocals with them, it’s like, man, you realize really quick who the better singer in the room is, you know what I mean?” Aldean says with a chuckle. “Those guys are amazing singers and really powerful and just a lot of range. It’s really cool for me to get to work with people like that and sort of find my spot in the song to make my voice work with theirs.”