Little Big Town Brings Fresh Energy to New Album, ‘It’s a Dying Art’: ‘There Is a New Excitement’
Categoria: Musica
The country quartet's 12th album is out now.
Por Billboard | 28/08/2026
In 2024, Little Big Town celebrated its 25 th anniversary together. And when it came time to return to the studio to make It’s a Dying Art , their first new album since hitting that milestone, Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Phillip Sweet , and Jimi Westbrook felt a renewed sense of purpose. “We felt like we should turn the page a bit and see what the next chapter could become,” Fairchild says of recording the band’s 12 th studio album, out Friday (Aug. 28) on MCA Nashville. “We don’t really have any boundaries on us at the moment from anybody saying, ‘You need to make this kind of music.’ We definitely just did whatever we wanted to do.” “There was a new excitement that we hadn’t felt in a while,” agrees Fairchild’s husband, Westbrook, during a Zoom interview from their Nashville home. That excitement also came from shaking up the process a little. For their first studio album since 2022’s Mr. Sun, the quartet— who have scored such hits as “Pontoon,” “Girl Crush,” “Day Drinking” and “Better Man” — turned to Gena Johnson , who had worked with Jason Isbell and Dolly Parton , to produce the set with Fairchild. Isbell also joined in, contributing guitar to “The Door,” while longtime friend Kelsea Ballerini sings on “Closing Time” and Ashley Monroe collaborates on “Sucker for a Sad Song.” While there are a few good-time songs on the set, like the fun, chipper “Crickets,” much of the album plumbs the depths of relationships and the highs and the lows. Additionally, the first song released, “Hey There Sunshine,” addressed mental health. After performing on Today Sept. 1 as part of Today ’s Citi Concert Series, the band starts the For the Art of It tour Sept. 24 in St. Petersburg, Fla. Below, Fairchild and Westbrook talked about the making of the album, playing with their famous friends and where they see themselves in 25 years. Did you approach this album any differently than you did the previous 11? Westbrook : I think it was different in a lot of ways, but not. The way it started was a little different. We didn’t have as a whole a group of songs that we were going, “This is what this record’s going to be like.” Not that we do that a lot, but sometimes we’ve had more of an idea of a number of songs. Fairchild : I think maybe the difference was being even choosier about songs, pickier about songs. We always are. We just we were either writing ones that we felt like were really holding the standard high, and then also finding songs that were blowing our minds. And then that also sets the bar really high. Westbrook : And then working with Gena behind the board and the vocal sounds that she gets was so inspiring and a definitely a catalyst for the spirit of this record. The sonic picture, she’s just so great at it, and that was exciting as the process started unfolding. The band that was playing that was a kind of an assembled group of players that we hadn’t played together with as a whole that were so great