Little Big Town on ‘Wanderlust’ Album: ‘We Don’t Know What It Is!’
Little Big Town have taken a departure from their county roots on their new collaborative album with Pharrell Williams, but they can't quite define what genre Wanderlust falls into.
“It’s not a country record,” the band's Karen Fairchild tells Billboard. “And it’s not like anything we’ve ever done.
"It’s fun to be spontaneous and put it out there to the fans because we want to, and not to overthink it but just because it has brought us a lot of joy, and we think it will for them as well," she continues. "So why not? We’re going with our gut and putting it out there. It’s just music, you know?”
Adds bandmate Kimberly Schlapman, "We don’t know what it is! We don’t know what’s gonna happen with it, really."
Wanderlust features eight songs, all produced by Williams. The band secretly started working with the rapper-slash-producer in Nashville in January.
"It was when we got a big snowstorm in Nashville, so we were really just stuck in the studio. I think we ordered Waffle House in,” Fairchild recalls. “We kept writing songs and playing ‘em, and our band was there. It felt like something we had never done before -- and for being a band as long as we have, that’s a hard thing to say, that it’s something that’s new. We were so intrigued that we flew to LA and wrote some more songs ... And it just kept going and going, until we felt it was too special not to share.”
The release of Wanderlust doesn't mean that the band is leaving country music behind, however: They've been spending time in the studio with producer Jay Joyce, who worked on their Tornado and Pain Killer albums, for a new country project.
Wanderlust is available for download via iTunes.
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