Trending on Billboard With his new album, Magnolia Sage , Jackson Dean put a different spin on his established gritty persona. In his first Big Machine album, 2022’s Greenbroke , he declined to include more than one love song in the midst of the project’s swampy sound. With this latest release on the newly formed Blue Highway label, he is fully embracing a relationship, returning multiple times to amorè as he explores more soul textures in the music on the heels of a January 2026 engagement. If Dean is thinking differently about interpersonal connection in his material, some of his willingness to take musical chances is strengthened by another key relationship, his ongoing collaboration with producer Luke Dick ( Miranda Lambert , Little Big Town ). The two creatives met at a 2019 party celebrating “Burning Man,” a song Dick co-wrote for Dierks Bentley and Brothers Osborne , when Dean was a mere 18. It wasn’t long before they became a musical team.…