But where Hunter Hayes was a solo album in the truest sense (Hayes played every instrument on the album and sang every vocal track himself), Storyline is more collaborative. For this album, the Louisiana native and four-time GRAMMY nominee chose to feature his touring band on the album, along with steel-guitar maestro Paul Franklin. As Hayes told Radio.com in a recent interview, Storyline is "a series of songs that talk about life and love and just writing the storyline as we go."

Musically and lyrically he sees it as "a continuation" from where he was on his previous album, but "it's a deeper conversation, too. I always said that for this record I wanted higher highs and lower lows - I wanted it to be more emotional. And I think in going for more emotion, you have to go deeper into soul, right? You've got to be vulnerable, you've got to be convicted. You've gotta be really, really deep on this stuff. And Storyline was the journey to find whatever that was going to end up being."

Hayes mentioned a handful of tracks that's he especially excited about, including "Wild Card," "Tattoo" ("a really fun one") and "If It's Just Me," which he called one of the "weirder" songs and "just very different from anything I've ever tried before."