As a songwriter, Jackson always has been a little tricky to classify. His work is a hybrid of Nashville professionalism and personal expressiveness: His songs offer the hummable polish of the most expert Music Row copyrights at the same time that they expose the personal interiors that listeners associate with the work of self-contained singer-songwriters.

With its seventeen straight-up original tunes related but not limited to what Jackson calls fun, Good Time is his most ambitious demonstration of how -- whether working with the great '60s-based country-soul of "When the Love Factor's High" the strummed memories of "1976," the deceptive dittiness of "I Still like Bologna," the harmonica flecked "Never Loved Before," a duet with Martina McBride, or the Nashville elegance of "I Wish I Could Back Up" -- the country song, in Alan Jackson's hands, is capable of all things.

'Sissy's Song,' written for the funeral of a family friend, honors a young woman's memory with all the compassionate dignity that country often brings to lost-love ballads. "It was for a lady who worked here at our house; someone I saw everyday like family," he says. "She died suddenly of an accident this past spring and it was really hard on me and all of us. This is the same track that we played at the funeral. It's a real pretty song and a lot of people told me how much it made them feel better so I was very proud of it."