Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
BBC Music	(mixed)
Billboard	(favorable)
The Boston Globe	(favorable)
Country Weekly
Entertainment Weekly	B-
Los Angeles Times
The New York Times	(average)
PopMatters

Freight Train is the sixteenth studio album by American country music artist Alan Jackson. It was released on March 30, 2010. The album's first single, "It's Just That Way", was released on January 4, 2010.

Freight Train is the last album in Jackson's contract with Arista Nashville, the label to which he has been signed since 1989. He told Great American Country that, even though it is his last Arista album, he has no plans to retire.

On January 11, 2010, Linda Ryan of "Rhapsody Blog" posted an article named "Most Anticipated Country Albums of 2010", where she included Jackson's Freight Train saying "There are few things in this world more sublime than Alan Jackson singing a slow-burning love song. With his deep, buttery voice, Jackson sounds exceptional when extolling the virtues of love; his new single, "It's Just That Way," is a three-and-a-half-minute slice of romantic bliss. A new Jackson release is always good news for country music lovers, and if the songs on his upcoming album are half as good as this one, the singer will have hit another home run".

Freight Train debuted at number seven on the U.S. Billboard 200 and number two on the Top Country Albums, selling 72,000 copies in its opening week. It's his first album since 1999's Under the Influence not to debut at #1 on the Billboard Country Albums Chart. As of July 3, 2010, the album has sold 168,547 copies in the U.S.

Upon its release, Freight Train received generally positive reviews from most music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 68, based on 10 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".

Stephen Thomas Erlewine with Allmusic gave it a three star rating, saying that Freight Train "rolls along comfortably, never pushing at the edges of Jackson’s comfort zone; [it] doesn’t offer a sustained romantic mood along the lines of 2006’s understated gem Like Red on a Rose. Instead, it’s the sound of a major star gently easing away from the spotlight, deciding that he’s so comfortable in his old clothes that there’s no reason to try something new". Randy Lewis with the Los Angeles Times gave it a three star rating, saying "this isn’t as consistently deeply moving nor as stylistically outside-the-box as his Alison Krauss-produced 2006 collection Like Red on a Rose, just down-the-middle country by one of the most dependably rewarding artists that genre has to offer". Dave Heaton with PopMatters gave it an eight star rating saying it "felt like an LP" and continuing saying "as an Alan Jackson album, Freight Train is so consistently likable that it makes me imagine that he might keep getting better over time, as well".

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Wikipedia