Hear Ronnie Dunn's New Take on the Holiday Classic 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas'

The year was 2005, and country star Ronnie Dunn was laying down vocals with the help of a full band for the Brooks & Dunn song "Believe."

Though the song would go on to be a Top 10 hit for the duo and win several CMA Awards, Dunn's first time recording it didn't exactly go as planned.

"I came back into the studio after cutting the song and no one said a word," Dunn tells PEOPLE with a laugh. "It was like, 'Well, that's a stinker!' That was time ill-spent."

Always the consummate professional, Dunn, 69, wasn't quite ready to give up on the inspirational song.

"I went back into the studio at my place, and I just stripped everything off except for the drums, the bass and the organ," Dunn remembers. "That drove the song and it also put that vocal where it should be."

Focusing on simplicity is a lesson Dunn has learned many times over, and one he puts into practice with his new version of the holiday classic "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," which PEOPLE is exclusively premiering.

Dustin Haney Ronnie Dunn

"I wanted to hear every breath of that vocal, so I just went into the studio with my piano player," says Dunn, who recorded the song over the summer. "We were at the studio just the two of us and cut it. It was just a simple keyboard and the vocal. It seems to really sing that way."

The song — originally written in 1943 by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane for the movie Meet Me in St. Louis — was not among those recorded for Brooks & Dunn's 2002 holiday album It Won't Be Christmas Without You. But it's stayed in Dunn's heart over the years.

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"We were experimenting with three or four [songs] in the studio this time, and our goal was to find one that worked," says Dunn, who admits that there has been "talk" about recording a full-fledged holiday album somewhere down the line. "'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' just stuck out right off the bat. Just that piano and vocal always does it for me."

Sonically, Dunn says he "referenced" the Frank Sinatra version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," which has also been covered in the past by country stars like Carrie Underwood, Garth Brooks and Vince Gill.

"We listened to different people who had done 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,' just to try to find a direction and we ended up gravitating to Frank," says Dunn, who alongside Brooks & Dunn bandmate Kix Brooks is up for Vocal Duo of the Year at the upcoming CMA Awards.

In fact, it was Sinatra's version that Dunn says pushed forward the somewhat melancholy feeling of the song, which he says still feels timeless all these years later.

"I'm suffering from the syndrome, you know?" admits Dunn of his self-prescribed, post-pandemic, somewhat fragile emotional condition at the moment. "You know, we got streaming stats back from different parts of the industry going in and coming out of and in the middle of [the pandemic], and they all showed that overwhelmingly, the audiences out there were gravitating to familiarity."

And that's exactly what made now the perfect time for Dunn to record the song.

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"Music often mimics culture at the time," explains Dunn, who released his fifth solo album, 100 Proof Neon, earlier this year. "And right now, everything seems fragmented to me. It hasn't settled into something. There is no continuity to it, and we need that. We really do. Ultimately, we're in a real state of disruption."

Though Dunn hopes to help quell that disruption with his music, it doesn't mean he's written any new holiday tracks — at least not since he co-wrote "It Won't Be Christmas Without You" more than 20 years ago.

"I haven't written another one since," Dunn says with a laugh. "When it comes to Christmas, people just always seem to gravitate to the standards, you know? I think the only one to break that mold of tradition and successfully do so was Mariah Carey. She knocked it out of the ballpark."