Alex Miller certainly isn’t opposed to recording an Alan Jackson song, but few things were as obvious as the chance to cut an unreleased track from the Country Music Hall of Famer.
Miller’s “Secondhand Smoke” can be found on his new More Country Than You album, released in spring of 2026.
It’s the traditional country project you’d expect from the 23-year-old Kentuckian, and it includes songs he wrote himself, plus a few covers.
- Alex Miller became famous after a 2021 appearance on American Idol.
- More Country Than You is the follow-up album to his debut, Miller Time (2022).
- This new album opens with a cover of Daryle Singletary‘s “Too Much Fun.”
Talking to Taste of Country Nights‘ Evan Paul, Miller says Jackson wrote “Secondhand Smoke” with Jim McBride in the ’90s, just as he was becoming a star. For whatever reason, he never recorded it.
Others like Tracy Byrd put it on hold, but nobody ever put a recording down.
“I’m just glad they didn’t because it was a No. 1 for me on the independent country charts,” Miller says.
McBride — who also wrote “Chattahoochee” with Jackson — died in January, but before that he got to know Miller.
“He said, ‘You might like this Alex,'” the younger singer recalls, “and I said, ‘Uh, Yeah!'”
The version Miller sings sounds pretty true to form to a song Jackson may have cut 30 years ago. That’s the point, he says, and it’s why great ’90s songwriters reach out to him with more opportunities.
“I guess I’m the shovel,” he jokes. “I keep diggin’ up some of those old things from the past.”
Another treasure Miller selected for his album is called “Just a Mom.” Wood Newton (“Bobby Sue” by the Oak Ridge Boys and “Riding With Private Malone” by David Ball) co-wrote this tribute to mothers.
“I’m very humbled when I see my email list of people who have sent me songs,” he shares. “I just have to pinch myself sometimes.”
Few who see Miller perform or hear his records will doubt his sincerity, but a love of traditional country music doesn’t come with any hate toward contemporaries.
He tells Evan Paul he really appreciates the word play in today’s country music and doesn’t have a disparaging word for anyone, even if his personal style resembles that of Zach Top, Drake Milligan and Jake Worthington.
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