Lady Antebellum Open Up About Surprising Tony Award Nomination

Lady Antebellum is speaking out about their Tony Award nomination, for Best Original Score for “Chop to the Top” from SpongeBob Square Pants: The Musical. The trio, made up of Charles Kelley, Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood, reveal that the children’s song was, surprisingly, written before any of them had children.

“The Spongebob Musical opportunity kind of came about randomly,” recalls Kelley. “We got approached if we could write a song for it and they gave us the scene and kind of a direction. We wrote the song called ‘Chop to the Top’ [laughs], and it was funny, we didn’t hear much about it for so many years.”

“It was before kids, we wrote it,” Haywood says.

Scott, who adds that Eisele, now four years old, was a newborn at the time, remembers vividly the day they wrote “Chop to the Top.

“It was one of those first writing appointments we did after Eisele was born, ’cause y’all came over to my basement,” Scott recounts.

Regardless of the timing, all three Lady A members admit they were surprised by the success of the musical, and honored to play a part in it.

“Those musicals must take forever to put together, because we were like, ‘Well, I guess it fell through,’ and all of a sudden, years later it resurfaced that it’s coming out,” says Kelley. “So, I can’t wait to see it. It’ll be fun to take the kids.”

Lady Antebellum have six children between them, including Kelley’s two-year-old son, Ward, Haywood’s son, Ward, three, and four-month-old daughter, Lillie, and Scott’s four-year-old daughter, Eisele and three-month-old twins, Betsy and Emory. In other words, life as a band is much different than when their self-titled freshman album was released ten years ago.

“It’s part of it,” Kelley says of their expanding road family. “We always want to put family first. We adjust. We always have. It’s like a traveling road family out there, and yeah, they almost are like little siblings already, so it’ll be interesting.”

Lady Antebellum will kick off their Summer Plays On Tour with Darius Rucker in July, but without their longtime drummer, Chris Tyrrell, who is also Scott’s husband, and is staying home to take care of their three children while Scott is on the road.

“It’ll hopefully be restful and efficient — I’m thinking about when we have writers out on the road to write for the next record,” says Scott. “I’ll be able to be fully present and focused and hopefully get a lot of fun writing done.”

Dates for all of their upcoming shows can be found on their website.

Photo Credit: Instagram/ladyantebellum