Little Big Town discuss power of 2000s country, Sugarland duet at 2024 CMT Music Awards
The new duet cover by Little Big Town and Sugarland of Phil Collins' four-decade-old, top-10 American pop hit "Take Me Home" isn't just another revival of a classic song.
As always in Nashville, songs carry a greater weight than words.
Few are as gifted in conveying the power of a song as Little Big Town's Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Jimi Westbrook, and Phillip Sweet or Sugarland's Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles.
Songs like Little Big Town's "Better Man," "Girl Crush" and Pontoon," plus Sugarland's "All I Want To Do," "Stay" and "Stuck Like Glue" are testaments to this notion.
The acts have a combined nearly five decades of experience that includes — important to their collaborative appearance at 2024's CMT Music Awards — 44 CMT Music Awards nominations and eight award victories.
"It's exciting whenever we get together," says Little Big Town's Jimi Westbrook to The Tennessean.
An era of growth
2024 marks Little Big Town's 25th anniversary as an act.
The quartet's origins date back to when Faith Hill's country hit "Breathe" and Lonestar's countrified rock ballad "Amazed" hit No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Both songs ended the year as two of the top 10 best-selling songs in the United States.
Chronologically acts like Carrie Underwood ("Before He Cheats"), Florida Georgia Line ("Cruise" and Bebe Rexha duet "Meant to Be"), Sam Hunt ("Body Like a Back Road"), Lil Nas X ("Old Town Road") and Maren Morris ("The Bones") extended that pop-crossover acclaim before 2023, where Jason Aldean, Oliver Anthony, Zach Bryan, Luke Combs, Kacey Musgraves and Morgan Wallen all topped Billboard's all-genre Hot 100 charts.
The digital and streaming work required to springboard country to Billboard success in the late 2010s and early 2020s was not as prevalent in how the group sold 10 million singles and had five top-10 Billboard country hits in their first decade together.
Similarly, Sugarland sold 10 million albums and achieved 12 Billboard top-10 hits in the same era.
Why does 1980s-era pop work so well in country music?
Southern anthems, sung in multi-part harmonies familiar to 100 years of the American songbook, have underpinned the success of both acts. Add in pop culture's love affair with country music and culture coupling well with sounds and styles familiar to ears, and what Westbrook calls the "ability to push boundaries" isn't as much a shove as it is tenderly pushing what stereotypes would consider an unexpectedly already-opened door.
To wit, Little Big Town's CMT Music Awards appearances have included performing alongside Jamey Johnson, covering Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain" with Keith Urban, and appearing alongside Pharrell Williams.
Westbrook, notably, showcases the vocal talent to match his tenor vocal to the range that Stevie Nicks' low contralto occupies on "The Chain."
Insofar as country's relationship to 80's anthems, Phil Collins' "Take Me Home" and Dream Academy's "Life In A Northern Town — another song Little Big Town and Sugarland recorded together (with Jake Owen in 2007) — were released in 1985.
Notably, that era arrived two years after Conway Twitty had covered the Pointer Sisters' "Slow Hand" to achieve his last gold-selling multi-week number-one song and Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers' "Islands in the Stream" topped Billboard's Hot 100 pop charts.
However, by 1985, the country industry's intersection with adult-contemporary R&B had waned.
Still, the music of that era — be it Madonna and Wham! 's ballad and radio-ready pop-driven stranglehold over Billboard's year-end Hot 100 chart — hadn't yet softened its underpinning by pop-softened melodic structures and harmony-driven song-styling.
Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is," Hall & Oates' "Out of Touch," Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World, "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits, and "Take On Me" by A-ha were some of the year's other big hits.
'There's room for all of us here'
"'Life in a Northern Town' created the opportunity for such an amazing and unexpected ride and I think 'Take Me Home' can hopefully cause a phenomenon again," Westbrook said.
"As six vocalists, we knew it was possible to take a giant ballad and make it sound even bigger. The chords, harmonies and notes we add to anything we sing together create fun, energetic versions of songs."
"Songs in that era were so well composed, written, and recorded. They felt so powerful [and ubiquitous]. Even if it flew under the radar for some people, everyone who listened to music also listened to not singles but albums back then. And because those vocals, especially, were so well composed and recorded, a song could feel familiar but also have that enjoyable element of rediscovery attached every time you hear it," adds Westbrook.
"My friends and I reunited to sing together because our hearts revel in making great music that dares to walk the line between our roots and the future."
Westbrook's final statement offers a sense of what the evolving legacy of acts like Little Big Town and Sugarland represent for contemporary country music.
"As new artists come along and musically express what the genre means to them, country's boundaries will always continue to expand. There's room for all of us here."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Little Big Town discuss Sugarland duet at 2024 CMT Music Awards
