Eric Church came out in a puff of smoke, alone, baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, at the beginning of his sold-out concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom this month, singing “Country Music Jesus”: “We need a second coming worse than bad/Some long-haired hippie prophet preaching from the book of Johnny Cash.”


Mr. Church’s whiskey-soaked gospel is not quite the same as the squeaky-clean traditionalist orthodoxy that grips much of Nashville these days, but it is orthodoxy nonetheless, a belief in the fundamental roughness of country music, even its transgressive potential.


And yet in spite of Mr. Church’s modest success — a couple of gold albums, a robust touring life — the masculinity crisis in mainstream country continues unabated, with soft rock becoming a more relevant touchstone for the genre than its ragged roots. That in turn made for a new archetype: the approachable outlaw, who wants to tweak the system from within but who puts little at risk.


Mr. Church tells one side of that story. A strong songwriter with a steady sneer, he has infiltrated gradually, and now that he’s leaning more and more on rallying cry songs — as seen on his thoroughly enjoyable, slightly dumbed-down 2011 album “Chief” (EMI Nashville) — his influence is growing, an alert and savvy singer-songwriter working from the bottom up.


Approaching the problem from the top down is Jason Aldean, who performed what was essentially a 1980s hard-rock show to a sold-out Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J., on Saturday. Mr. Aldean is country’s newest arena star, a story notable for his signing to an independent label, Broken Bow Records. He’s also a romantic, unafraid of wide emotions, and a gentle vocal presence, even on his toughest songs.


But his songs are huge: Mr. Aldean prefers the anthemic and delivers wistful sentiments without shame. At this show he was spread wide topically, but not tonally. “Big Green Tractor” was an emphatic love song, and “Why” was emphatic about rescuing collapsed love. He sang “Don’t You Wanna Stay” with Lauren Alaina, one of his openers who has come a long way from shyly demurring from singing overly intimate songs on “American Idol” last year. The original version, featuring Kelly Clarkson, is one of his biggest hits.


He’s not a pure outlaw, by any means, but he’s been grandfathered in thanks to his first single, “Hicktown,” from 2005, when making a blowsy, gritty song about rural pride felt like an intervention, even if Mr. Aldean always appeared a little too clean for the work. “Hicktown” was his closer at this show, a rumbling end to a raucous night that ended with several bullets of country celebration: “My Kinda Party,” “She’s Country,” “Dirt Road Anthem.” His current hit, “Fly Over States,” was a celebration of the places disdained by the first-class passengers the song parodies — it’s his savviest take on the subject.


But Mr. Aldean sings these songs smoothly, just like his others. He’s a modest vocalist but still a strong one, without a signature tone to help him stand out. It wasn’t a surprise when, late in the show, he covered “Time Marches On” by Tracy Lawrence, calling that plainspoken singer “one of the biggest vocal influences on me.”


That song came at the end of a short run of songs mid-set alongside his main opening act, the frat-country crooner Luke Bryan, perennially in search of a good time, and one of the few country stars of the moment who make Mr. Aldean sound forceful. Earlier Mr. Bryan had closed his own set with “Country Girl (Shake It for Me),” weaving Beyoncé and Rihanna’s names into the song and calling a woman up to the stage for some shaking, her and her 2-year-old daughter.