Silke Jasso
Lady Antebellum is back with their new album, “Heart Break,” their first set of new material since 2014. It’s the longest gap between Lady Antebellum albums in their decade-long career. During that time away from Lady A, band member Hillary Scott went off and made a Grammy-winning faith-based album with her family, Charles Kelley collaborated with Miranda Lambert and Dierks Bentley on his solo project, “The Driver,” and Dave Haywood produced an EP for new trio Post Monroe.
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Those experiences only made the members of Lady A stronger once they came back together to start work on “Heart Break.”
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Charles tells Rare Country, “I definitely think Hillary gained a lot of confidence in that process as a songwriter.”
Hillary adds, “We all had that in our own way of just living life, spending time with our family. Pursuing things in this off time that we were passionate about. I would say the passion we all brought back when we reconvened — when the process of creating this album started — that was the most tangible component that I think all of us brought in.”
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To get back into the Lady Antebellum groove, the members headed off on extended trips to California and Florida to reconnect and start making new music. They had the luxury of taking their time with the project, which is a lot like it was for the band in the very beginning.
Dave tells us, “We were trying to get back to that feeling of 2006, 2007 when we first started as a band. You had nowhere to be, nothing to do other than just work on music and have a great time doing it. I think that’s when we created our best music. Those first few records were really important when we were kicking off. Every record’s been such an important piece of our career.”
Hillary thinks they accomplished that mission of reconnecting on a much deeper level because they got away from their day-to-day lives in Nashville.
She explains, “We’re always great friends and we’ve never not been in a great place, but when you’re making meals together and you’re ‘cheersing’ and listening to songs that you wrote 10 years ago and laughing about them or playing your latest favorite artist, those are just bonding moments. That’s what it felt like. So, that was the start of it, and I feel like the creative fell in as we all got to connect like that.”
Listening back to “Heart Break” now, Dave agrees with Hillary’s assessment. He adds, “This one feels like such a re-energized feeling for us in our career, and a special moment for a lot of different reasons.”
Lady A’s latest hit, “You Look Good,” is featured on “Heart Break.” You can buy the album now at Cracker Barrel stores and CrackerBarrel.com.
