Aaron Allen
Highway Mile - EP
Album · Country · 2020
After nearly two decades working under the radar in the Canadian country-music trenches, tattooed singer-songwriter Aaron Allen is finally ready for his close-up. And on the Highway Mile EP, he introduces himself to a wider audience with a six-song snapshot of the most important things in his world: music, family and quality ink. With the opening anthem “Where Music Comes From”, he sings passionately about the songs that changed his life—name-dropping Tom Cochrane’s “Life Is a Highway” along the way—while affirming his desire to do the same for you. As the London, Ontario-based artist explains to Apple Music, “We all have a soundtrack to our lives, and I wanted to write a song that captured the essence of where music really does come from. To quote the song: ‘It’s in my bones, it’s in my blood ... I feel it deep down in my soul.’” But Allen also has a gift for expressing universal ideas through vivid little details—on the nostalgic title track, he sings, “I remember baseball cards and Big League Chew,” and on the cheery closing shuffle “Good Tattoo”, he mines his other profession as a tattoo artist to weave a sweet romantic metaphor. As Allen explains, the song is “about how a tattoo is permanent in the same way that love is permanent”, making it the ultimate statement of devotion from a singer who wears his heart—and art—on his sleeve.