Sugarland Reveal How a Taylor Swift Song Landed on Their Upcoming 'Bigger' Album

Sugarland made their first appearance at the 2018 ACM Awards since their self-imposed hiatus after [...]

Sugarland made their first appearance at the 2018 ACM Awards since their self-imposed hiatus after the release of their 2010 The Incredible Machine album. The duo, made up of Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush announced Chris Stapleton (who was home with his newborn twins), as the winner of Album of the Year, for From a Room: Volume 1.

But chances are, the pair will be making plenty of appearances at awards shows over the next several years. Their Bigger album, which will be released on June 8, includes a song called "Babe," co-written by Taylor Swift and Train's Pat Monahan, with Swift also lending her vocals to the song.

"She reached out," Nettles said of Swift backstage at the ACM Awards. "We have obviously known each other for many years. When she was just getting started, we had just had our first little EP out called Premium Quality Tunes, and she still has a copy of it that we signed for her, whenever we played a couple shows together. And she was excited we were getting back together and reached out, and said, 'Hey, I have a song.' And that is a short list, ladies and gentleman, of people to whom she has said, 'Hey, I have a song. Wanna sing it?' So we said yes."

"We've never really put a song by anybody else on any of our records, so we weren't really used to sorting through that, and we didn't want to mess it up," added Bush. "So we didn't tell anybody about it, until we got finished. And she liked it, thank God. It is a good song."

While Sugarland took a break, Nettles released two albums, That Girl and Playing With Fire, while Bush worked on several projects with other artists (including Lindsay Ell). So when they decided to reunite, both Nettles and Bush were relieved to realize that much of how they operated and interacted remained the same.

"The dynamic and the flow creatively is much the same, and that was such a pleasant surprise after really almost seven years of not having written together, and five years of not having worked together on the road," Nettles said. "So to find out that that flow was the same was pleasantly surprising. But Ido think we got way more efficient over the hiatus."

Sugarland will kick off their Still the Same Tour on May 4. Dates can be found on their website. Bigger is currently available for pre-order on Amazon and iTunes.

Photo Credit: Instagram/Sugarland

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