Brett Young on How Being an 'Annoying Younger Brother' Helped Him Fall in Love with Country Music (Exclusive)

Brett Young showed no mercy with the control of the car radio growing up. 

The country star spoke exclusively to PEOPLE Tuesday at the listening party for his fourth studio album Across the Sheets (out Aug. 4) hosted by Audacy at the Hard Rock Hotel in New York City — and Young's fans can actually thank his older sister, Shawna, in part for his career in country music. 

“She's eight years older than me, and growing up, whenever we drove in the car with my mom, we had to alternate who got the front seat, but whoever got the front seat, got the radio,” Young explains.

“Well, my sister didn't like when I got the front seat, so she would kick the back of it. As an annoying younger brother, the only thing I knew to do — and she hated country — I would find the one [country] station that we had in Southern California, and just crank it to bug her,” he adds.  

What Young, now 42, didn't realize at the time was that his brotherly act of revenge would soon lead to an unexpected love of the genre — after one song in particular hit the radio station, that is.

“I heard 'Don't Take the Girl,' and I fell in love with country music, and I've been a fan ever since,” he says. “I fell in love with the songwriting, the storytelling. All of it. That was the end of it for me.”

Or rather, that was just the beginning. While Young’s friends were listening to “Blink 182 and Offspring while they surfed all day,” he recalls, “I was still there at the beach, but I just had headphones on listening to Ty Herndon and Shenandoah and Diamond Rio. And I was like, ‘You guys don't even know!’”

“Don’t Take the Girl” is country legend Tim McGraw’s song off his 1994 album Not a Moment Too Soon — one that Young is breathing new life into nearly 20 years later with his cover of the track on Across the Sheets.

McGraw, as it turns out, is a fan of Young’s, too. 

“I got to meet him [when] we opened for Tim and Faith [Hill] in Dublin, Ireland, two years ago," says Young. "I came down and met him and we got to talk for a second, and then when we recorded the song, my producer Dann Huff has worked with Tim a bunch and sent him the song, and Tim said only nice things. It was very flattering.” 

The one final convert to country music in Young’s life, however, is perhaps the most ironic... and the most full-circle. 

“Now, my sister is obsessed with country music,” he says. “I win!”