Brad Paisley’s second album, 2001’s Part II, further entrenched the styles he touched on in his debut and would explore throughout his career, but introduced a new focus on the album as a thematic unit. A man after my own heart, Paisley is a fan of albums as works of art unto themselves, not just collections of songs.

The story behind the concept of Part II is almost too good to be true. Paisley had seen Father of the Bride with a woman who later left him. When the sequel came out, he says he went to the same theater on the same day as that previous date with the silly notion that maybe she’d be there, too, and they could rekindle their romance. She wasn’t, and they didn’t.

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