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Chris Young Enlists "Famous Friends" Lauren Alaina And Dan + Shay For New Album

"I'm putting my arms around a whole lot of my friends," says the star performer about his Aug. 6-releasing album

It turns out that Chris Young's "Famous Friends" duet with Kane Brown was only scratching the surface of the personal, good-time vibes he's been preparing for his new album -- also entitled Famous Friends -- due out on Aug. 6. "For me, this album feels like I'm putting my arms around a whole lot of my friends and letting them all get to be a part of it. So it's one of the reasons why I'm so pumped about it," the country vocalist recently told PEOPLE.

"We've been teasing everybody for years," he adds. "It's been so long that I've been talking about all the stuff that I did in the past year-and-a-half, and I think people at one point thought I was just messing with them a little bit. They were like, 'Do you actually have an album coming out?' It's so exciting to have this information out there."

Young co-wrote 13 of the album's 14 tracks, which includes collaborations with the likes of Lauren Alaina on the song "Town Ain't Big Enough," which was co-written with Dan + Shay's Shay Mooney, Cary Barlowe, and Corey Crowder. "I wrote 'Town Ain't Big Enough' with Shay intentionally as a duet, and I was like, 'Man, you've got to sing harmony with me on this,'" Young recalls. "Then then I thought of who I had been out on the road with recently, Lauren was one of the names that [stuck out]. I was like, 'Let's call her and see what she can do with it.' She came over to the studio and sang on the song, and it was perfect."

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