One of the most tender moments on Kane Brown’s Different Man album comes in “Pop’s Last Name,” a ballad that honors the grandfather who helped raise him.

“My pop’s last name / Still feel his hand here on my shoulder / I still hear him say / ‘You’ll understand when you get older’ / Today I couldn’t be any more grateful, thankful or proud to say / I got my pop’s last name,” Kane sings in the chorus of the song.

“He was my only father figure because my dad’s been in prison since I was a child,” the singer explains in an appearance on Today’s Country Radio With Kelleigh Bannen, adding that his granddad died last year.

“He was the guy that came and taught me baseball, you know, took me on drives,” he continues.

Kane’s granddad took him to visit Civil War monuments in his home state of Georgia, a memory that the singer immortalizes in the lyrics of “Pop’s Last Name.”

He also stood up for young Kane during difficult times, like when he was being abused by his stepfather. “When I was going through child abuse and stuff with my stepdad…I wasn’t going to get to go to baseball practice one day, he came and took me out of the house and was like, ‘He’s coming with me,’” Kane recounts.

“[He] was just a big father figure,” he adds. “And so I had to write a song about him.”

“Pop’s Last Name” is on the track list of Different Man, which arrived on Friday.

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