There’s a simple reason Lady Antebellum’s latest album, “Heart Break,” sounds so energetic and happy, vocalist Hillary Scott told The Tribune ahead of Wednesday’s stop at Usana Amphitheatre in West Valley City.
After the last tour cycle, the band members were tired and felt it was time for a break, so they took one.
That checks out. After forming in 2006 and issuing their debut, self-titled album in 2008, Lady A had followed suit with studio album releases in 2010, ’11, ’13 and ’14, plus a Christmas album in 2012. They’d also done five major headlining tours in that span.
“I think, first and foremost, we had not stopped for nine years. And we really wanted to give each other — and ourselves — the gift of time, of just being able to really just hit the reset button in a way, but more than anything, spend time with our families,” Scott said. “When this thing started in 2006, we were all single, we had no responsibility other than to get ourselves where we needed to be, make sure we had food in our belly and a good night’s sleep, and that was really the extent of it. And now, we all have children and spouses — with both of those relationships being the most important in our lives — that need nurturing, and that takes time. And … if we don’t take the time to really pour into our families, then everything else is gonna suffer.”
Scott, fellow vocalist Charles Kelley and multi-instrumentalist Dave Haywood took the better part of a year off to spend with their loved ones and work on solo projects before reconvening to write what would become “Heart Break.”
Once the time was right to get back to the business of Lady A, they decided it would best be done away from Nashville. So they booked a “retreat” in Florida and sat down with a few writers they’d known for years, plus a handful they’d never worked with before. Scott noted that despite being in “a really fun, kind of a vacation-mode environment,” the band treated it like a work trip, making it a point to write at least two songs a day. “We never put our toes in the sand except for one late-night bonfire that we had planned.”
The title track proved the centerpiece of those sessions and had the band feeling they were on the right track. After that, the trio flew out to California for more writing — and subsequently recording — with songwriter/producer du jour “busbee” (aka Michael James Ryan Busbee), who had caught their attention via his recent work with Maren Morris and Keith Urban.
Despite all the people helping to push them in the right direction, though, it was paramount to them that the new album be reflective of the band’s voice.
“We knew we wanted to write more for this album than ever. It was about three years, by the time ‘Heart Break’ was released, between projects, and we knew, just from our relationship with our fans, if it’s not our story, if it’s not our life, they’re gonna know. That’s not gonna feel authentic to us,” Scott said. “So when we started, we were like, ‘OK, we wanna write more than we’ve written for any other album,’ and we did — 11 of the 13 songs, we wrote.”
So, naturally, the album’s lead single was one of the two the band did not write.
Much like producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange famously telling Def Leppard near the end of the “Hysteria” recording sessions back in ’87 that he felt the album was missing something, and “Pour Some Sugar on Me” becoming a last-minute addition, Scott said busbee told Lady Antebellum that as much as he liked “Heart Break,” “there’s not a song that captures the energy and the excitement” that went into making it.
Scott recalled that before playing them a demo of “You Look Good” — which turned out to be decidedly un-Lady A-like with its brass section flourishes — busbee told them, “I want y’all to keep your mind open.”
Not a problem, as it turned out.
“We were like, ‘Let’s do it!’ We loved it, we absolutely loved it. It’s one of the few we didn’t write, and the sound — it really stretched us,” Scott said. “We loved it immediately, it made our heads bob. We loved that it had this kind of swagger to it.”
Despite wanting to keep their material at the heart of “Heart Break,” they also felt they’d be foolish to turn great tracks down.
“We are really passionate about our songwriting and would all consider ourselves songwriters first, but when a song like [‘You Look Good’] or ‘Hurt’ comes to you … you have to have the objectivity and to know that, ‘OK, I love what we write together, but this, we never could have written, and it fits in this project in such a perfect way,’ ” she said. “We’ve never been that band — it’s always, the song wins, no matter what, who matter who wrote it. We’re not the end-all, be-all songwriters. That’s the beautiful thing about this industry — there’s endless talent everywhere you look.”
To say it’s a gamble that paid off would be a bit misleading, considering Scott said she and her bandmates were so unequivocally thrilled with the song that making it didn’t feel like much of a risk at all. Nevertheless, the results have been there.
Lady Antebellum performed “You Look Good” at the Academy of Country Music awards show, with the University of Nevada-Las Vegas marching band playing the horn parts. Since then, “Heart Break” debuted atop the country album charts, and “You Look Good” appears set to reach No. 1 on the country song charts.
So many horns! 🎺🎺🎺Had so much fun during that #ACMs #YouLookGood performance!!! https://t.co/BXV50kVSQX @ACMawards pic.twitter.com/ojZreoayRT
— Lady Antebellum (@ladyantebellum) April 3, 2017
All big accomplishments, to be sure, but the track has had a longer-reaching impact still.
“That song has forever changed our live show. … We have two horn players out on tour with us now for every show,” Scott said. “And they’ve gone in and written parts for a lot of songs that’ve been on previous albums that they’re just giving a fresh life to a lot of these songs that we’ve been performing onstage for almost a decade. It’s really changed the course of the way that we’re touring right now, musically, onstage.”
In the end, Scott said, what she loves most about “Heart Break” is that even though Lady Antebellum treated the album’s creation like serious work, the finished product sounds like just the opposite.
“It was so easy and so invigorating and creative and fun. And I think when you listen to the record, it runs the gamut of emotions, but it’s a fun record,” she said. “It’s a positive, empowering, fun record. It’s like putting a mirror up to how we felt in the process.”
Lady Antebellum<br>With Kelsea Ballerini, Brett Young<br>When • Wednesday, Aug. 30; doors at 6 p.m., show at 7:30<br>Where • Usana Amphitheatre, 5150 Upper Ridge Rd., West Valley City<br>Tickets • $32.75-$66.25; Smith’s Tix