How Little Big Town Built 25 Years of Harmony on an Unconventional Foundation

The standard chord in a country song has three notes, but the members of Little Big Town approach their material with four voices.

The incongruity is a source of tension — good tension, to misquote John Lewis — that adds up to 25 years. The group gave its first public performance at the Grand Ole Opry in May 1999, sang the national anthem a day later before an Oscar de la Hoya boxing match in Las Vegas and received its first concert payday — a $2,000 check after opening for Dwight Yoakam — four weeks after that.

As Little Big Town celebrates its 25th anniversary with the Aug. 9 release of Greatest Hits, all four of the group’s original voices — Jimi Westbrook, Kimberly Schlapman, Karen Fairchild and Phillip Sweet — remain in the lineup, in a show of unity that defies the norm.

“I think back to when we started and the people that were in town — a lot of those people are [still] here, but then there’s a lot of people that aren’t,” Westbrook reflects. “We know how hard it is to last this long in this. But then for a group of four individuals to stay together without any switch-out of personnel within the four of us — yeah, we know how hard that is. And we’re so grateful.”

Little Big Town marks its silver anniversary with several notable undertakings. The band’s Greatest Hits collection will include three new collaborations: Sugarland joins the group on a cover of Phil Collins’ “Take Me Home,” Kelsea Ballerini assists on a reworking of the 2010 LBT track “Shut Up Train,” and Miranda Lambert updates the band’s 2010 single “Little White Church.” “She came in the studio and just smoked it,” Sweet says of Lambert’s performance.

Later in this anniversary year, LBT embarks on a Take Me Home Tour of 18 arenas with Sugarland, and NBC will present a two-hour holiday special, Little Big Town’s Christmas at the Opry, with a slate of unnamed guests.

Plenty has changed during LBT’s 25-year run. The members have been with three different labels; Westbrook and Fairchild married seven years into the band’s existence; Schlapman lost her first husband to a heart attack; and the addition of kids into the LBT mix created additional dynamics to navigate.

No matter how the tides of fortune have turned or their personal relationships have changed, the quartet has stayed committed to the group. They’ve done some work outside LBT, but none of them has released a band-challenging solo album.

“I think we find real joy in creating together,” Sweet says. “There’s something about that that heals — it brings things in that we couldn’t have done if we were all independent solo [artists]. I mean, harmony — cheesy as a word as that can be — it is a true thing. We found harmony within ourselves, and then when our voices sing together, we feel that joy, we feel that harmony, we feel something bigger than ourselves.”

The 25th anniversary and Greatest Hits point in tandem to what makes Little Big Town’s brand bigger than the average career. The bulk of the songs on Greatest Hits — including 2005’s “Boondocks,” 2012’s “Pontoon” and 2014’s “Girl Crush” — feel more recent than they really are. LBT’s Taylor Swift-written “Better Man” topped Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in 2017, seven years ago. It’s the last top 10 single the group has had, though other, more recent songs — including 2020’s RIAA-certified double-platinum party track “Wine, Beer, Whiskey” and 2019’s female-empowerment statement “The Daughters” — have made their biggest impact by widening the group’s creative turf.

This year’s Sugarland dates are a reminder of how Little Big Town connects even when country’s most traditional means of exposure, broadcast radio, isn’t particularly receptive. Those two acts teamed with Jake Owen for a 2007 cover of “Life in a Northern Town,” a choice that seemed quizzical at the time: a melancholy post-new wave pop song that contrasted with the heartland rockers that were most often used as country covers during that era. “Life in a Northern Town” didn’t chart, but it earned a Grammy nomination and became a cult favorite among the LBT fan base. It also strengthened the group’s creative convictions.

“It definitely shaped the way we approach making music — following our own creative inspiration rather than trying to chase radio, because that wasn’t always available for us,” Westbrook says. “I feel like we’ve probably always been that band that people gave us opportunities when we would stretch ourselves. So I think a lot of the biggest songs that we’ve had were moments that weren’t necessarily what people would call chasing a trend. It was us just kind of following our creative inspiration.”

That inspiration plays out unlike any other act in the format, in great part because LBT crams four voices into those three-note chords. In some of the act’s most effective pieces — “When Someone Stops Loving You,” “Silver and Gold,” “Leavin’ in Your Eyes,” “Tumble and Fall” — there are moments when the extra voice wedges itself in on a note that makes the harmonies thick and unstable with a slight sting of dissonance. Even if those songs don’t land among the band’s greatest hits, they fill out the members’ creative palette and put them in a distinct sonic country space.

“There’s tones between the tones,” Sweet explains. “There’s beautiful things that happen when we create together that I can’t explain. There’s vibrations and overtones and things that happen. You can’t explain it; you just have to feel them. [If] it goes to No. 58 on the charts, who cares? We loved it.”

Those songs, it can be argued, are — alongside the still-necessary hits — the key to the group’s longevity, keeping the fan base interested in Little Big Town’s work even as they keep the members interested in staying together.

“We’re still out here, fighting and loving every minute of it,” Westbrook says. “And I’m grateful that after 25 years that it’s still happening.”

This post was originally published on this site

Written by Mr. Nimbus