When Scotty McCreery sings "I ain't all holy water / And I ain't all Jim Beam / I'm somewhere in between," he means it. The lyrics to his newest Top 10 hit tell his story better than those who protect an innocent image of him may like.

McCreery tells Taste of Country he was painted as a saint while on American Idol in 2011, and that stuck with him through his first two studio albums, released while he was still a teenager. On Seasons Change (2018) he's grown up. His third studio album finds him approaching marriage with a few stories (the kind of stories a parent never wants to know) from his wild youth to tell. Where "In Between" falls short on personal detail, McCreery jumps in, admitting he once threw a legendary party while a student at N.C. State University.

Watch: Scotty Talks About the Party That Inspired "In Between"

"We moved into a place; we called it the diamond," McCreery shared prior to the album's release. "We thought it was a diamond in the rough, and really it was just the rough. It was no good. It was a dump, but our first weekend back at college, we had this party for my buddy, Bird. It was his 21st (birthday) party, but it was also a welcome back to school party and we thought it was just going to be 50-75 folks, word of mouth kind of thing ..."

"... I went upstairs at 9:30 to get a drink, came back down like 10 minutes later, and it went from like 50 to 75 to like three to four hundred people packed in this house," he continues.

"Cops came over at like 12:30 and they said, verbatim, 'We've got to give y’all a ticket, but this is impressive. This is the biggest party we’ve seen that wasn’t Greek at NC State.' I’m like, perfect! That’s great. Had a good time."

"I'm a far cry from being a one night stand / But I ain't ready for a ring on my hand," he sings. As it turns out he was more ready for a ring on his hand than he knew. Soon he'd marry Gabi Dugal and write songs like "This Is It" (a No. 1 hit) and "Wherever You Are" about her. "Five More Minutes" was the album's lead single, about longing for more time with the ones you love. That, too, hit No. 1 on Billboard's Country Airplay chart, proving that by being his most honest self, he's most successful. The chorus of "In Between" goes:

"I'm in between / Friday night wild and quiet Sunday morning / Between / Done after one and keep on pouring / Ain't too high, Ain't too low / Just holding down the middle, I’m steady as I go / I ain't all holy water and I ain't all Jim Beam / I'm somewhere in between."

Credit Frank Rogers, Jessi Alexander and Jonathan Singleton for helping McCreery pen "In Between." Rogers has also produced McCreery's last two albums.

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