Little Big Town has come a long way since they formed the award-winning country music vocal band in 1998. Now celebrating 25 years of music, LBT is set to drop a new album, Greatest Hits, loaded with their best songs later this month.
The tracklist will also include a special song that, even though it was their own, was not penned by the country band. Pop star Taylor Swift wrote the song Better Man, and reached out to Little Big Town, hoping they would like it.
With a career that long, the four band members—Karen Fairchild, Jimi Westbrook, Kimberly Schlapman, and Philip Sweet—have picked several milestones along the way, Taylor Swift’s song being one of them. Better Man was released in 2016 off their album The Breaker, earning LBT a Grammy Award for the single.
Ahead of their upcoming album, Greatest Hits’, release on August 9, LBT sat down with PEOPLE to reflect and discuss their best songs that could or could not make it to the record. Needless to say, they had a spot saved for Better Man. Philip Sweet narrated the moment they received Taylor Swift’s email and the chain of events that followed until the single’s grand success.
“We were all at home, one day off the road. We were out with Luke Bryan on tour. I got an email one night, and it was Taylor Swift, so I was like, “What is this?” Sweet recalled on Thursday, August 1.
He continued, “I read it, and she was like, “Hey, I have this song. I’ve had it for a little while. I hear your harmonies on it. If you like it, great. If not, no big deal.’” His band members caught up the next day and were “amazed” by the pop icon’s thoughtful gesture. “Then it turned out to be a beautiful match for us,” the Boondocks musician added.
Though humbled by Swift’s approach, LBT wanted the song to flourish on its own and thus did not reveal the Love Story singer’s association with them until after. A bigger challenge that stood out was LBT’s reinterpretation of Swift’s song, as it was difficult to draw out from the latter’s tunes.
Therefore, Taylor Swift’s version of Better Man, as was necessary, was reinterpreted by LBT to make it their own before the single landed on their eighth studio album, The Breaker. The country band’s doubts were eventually cleared out with the final track, and she brought in the pop icon herself to approve of the same.
“She turned around after she listened to it, and her mouth was open,” Karen Fairchild recalled during the interview. She gave Little Big Town her blessing, and the song thrived on the charts.
LBT and Taylor Swift’s ties go back to their early Nashville days, as they have known each other for a long time, Fairchild affirmed. Their collaboration propelled their friendship, and the country band also joined Taylor Swift during the 1989 World Tour in 2015. Besides, Better Man has become a staple of the pop star’s concert tracklist, as she also performed the single during the recent Eras Tour.
Little Big Town’s 25th anniversary album, Greatest Hits, drops on August 9, following which they will embark on a tour with Sugarland this fall.
