Luke Bryan is opening up about the loss of his brother and sister, with the ‘Play It Again’ hitmaker reflecting on how he channelled that grief to write some of his most personal songs.

In a new cover interview with Cigar Aficionado, Bryan chats about a range of fascinating topics, but gets particularly candid about how he has explored grief through his music.

Since the mid-2010's, Bryan has become synonymous with party-starting and ‘Bro-Country’ anthems, such as ‘Country Girl (Shake It For Me)’, ‘That's My Kind of Night’ and - most recently - the playful and widely misunderstood ‘Fish Hunt Golf Drink’.

But there has always been a depth to Bryan's albums that is often overlooked, with the Georgia native able to tackle thornier topics with a striking vulnerability and emotional richness, epitomised by ‘Build Me a Daddy’ and ‘Favorite Flowers’.

In the conversation, Bryan meditates on losing his brother Chris in a car accident in 1996 and his sister Kelly from sudden-death syndrome in 2007. A few years later, his sister's husband, Ben - Bryan's brother-in-law - passed away suddenly, too.

Bryan speaks about how he hopes he can offer comfort through his music, as well as reflecting on how he uses his experience with grief as added motivation to seize every single day.

The ‘One Margarita’ crooner outlines, “Sadly, it’s part of my story. Hopefully, people can hear my story and if they have loss or something tragic, maybe it’ll inspire them to try to get through another day and press on and understand there is a challenging reality to life that it is temporary. I just try to treat every day as really, really precious and try to squeeze the most out of every moment while we’re here”.

Bryan expands, “You express it in different ways. I wrote a song about my brother called ‘Songs You Never Heard’...that was this real powerful song for me. I wrote a song called ‘God Picks His Favorite Flowers First,’ and that was about my sister”.

Bryan is gearing up to release his brand new album, Signs, with the keenly anticipated project set to include the already-released singles, ‘Word On The Street’, ‘Fish Hunt Golf Drink’, ‘Country And She Knows It’, ‘Made It A Memory’ and more. The title-track, which Bryan has been teasing across socials, arrives on Friday, August 7th.

The full project drops on September 18th, and this latest interview serves as a welcome to reminder of Bryan's versatility. He continues to receive flak for releasing songs that focus on more light-hearted, jovial subject matter - such as ‘Fish Hunt Golf Drink’. But as he highlights to Cigar Aficionado, he can also pen a stunning and visceral song about grief and loss. Regardless of what his naysayers and detractors might say about Bryan, we can't wait to listen to Signs in a couple of months’ time.