ary Allan’s string of hits dates back to 1996’s “Her Man,” and he’s had a trio of #1 country singles (“Man to Man,” Tough Little Boys,” and “Nothing On but the Radio”), but he’s never had what those in the business term a “career record” until this year’s “Best I Ever Had” (which is still climbing Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart; at this writing, it’s up to #9). The lead single from his new album Tough All Over, “Best I Ever Had” isn’t just a heartbreaker of a song—it’s a record that takes your heart out of your chest, shatters it like a dropped ceramic vase, and then re-inserts the shards back into your chest in a haphazard fashion. It’s shocking to me that a record of this power was written by Matthew Scannell, the lead singer of the pop-rock footnote Vertical Horizon (2002’s “Everything You Want”); apparently, “Best” needed to be sung by someone who truly understood its thrust, and Allan’s certainly that singer.

Now, Allan’s always been a good singer, blessed with a voice that can both growl and soar when need be, and Allan knows how to use it. But he’s the best possible singer to cut a song like “Best”—and, I’d argue, has gone from being a good to a great singer—because of what’s happened in his personal life since his last album. In that time, his wife, Angela Herzberg, committed suicide, leaving Allan a widower and single father. I can’t fathom what that does to someone, but it gives his reading of “Best” a resonance like you wouldn’t believe. It opens:

So you sailed away
Into a grey sky morning
Now I’m here to stay
Love can be so boring

And nothing’s quite the same now
I just say your name now

But it’s not too bad
You’re only the best I ever had
You don’t want me back
You’re just the best I ever had

Knowing the backstory of Allan’s personal life makes it nearly unbearable, and simultaneously makes “Best I Ever Had” one of the singles of the year.

The true beauty of Tough All Over, however, lies in the fact that “Best” is just one in a set of great songs collected here. A number of these, including the title track, “No Damn Good,” and “I Just Got Back from Hell” are cut from the same cloth as many of the Blasters’ best tracks, with Dwight Yoakam’s influence (especially his early records) clear as well. Hell, it’s no stretch to suggest that “Hell” itself would be a great song for John Doe to cut, with or without X, even.

“He Can’t Quit Her” is a fairly astonishing song, about a man who becomes obsessed with a prostitute and by song’s end winds up “on the wrong end of a forty-five”; Allan delivers it like the greatest storyteller you’ve ever been enraptured by. Speaking of story songs, the album’s center is arguably “Nickajack Cave,” written by the great Jamie O’Hara. In front of the song’s lyrics in the CD booklet, Allan writes, “Every man has to come to a crossroad somewhere along the way. Johnny Cash came to his crossroad in a place called Nickajack Cave,” and this song is that tale, told and sung as well as a biographical film in much less time.

Tough All Over is a pleasure-and-pain album—it sears, but it hurts so good. Gary Allan’s always been an intense artist (you won’t hear him cutting a song such as Brad Paisley’s “Alcohol”; that’s just not who he is artistically), and never moreso than here, but it sounds like with Tough All Over that Allan, a country artist’s country artist, has finally cut the album his career’s been pointing toward (whether any of us, him included, knew it or not). This is an unqualified triumph.