Lady Antebellum Explains Decision to Add Horns to New Single
“It just takes the whole thing up a notch. They're just loud and in your face and it's just such a fun musical kind of experiment and experience for us,” shares Dave Haywood.
After a year off from writing and recording music as a trio, Lady Antebellum is back with a bang!
The GRAMMY-winning trio’s new single, “You Look Good,” features a new sound as the band has decided to add horns to the mix. The idea of adding a horn section was something that the group’s Hillary Scott has asked to have for a long time and it only made sense recently.
“Growing up as a little girl one of my favorite songs that would just … My parents have told me this story, that would get me just dancing in the living room was ‘Sir Duke’ by Stevie Wonder,” Scott told Sounds Like Nashville and other media recently. “That horn section just … It’s so iconic, everybody can hear in their head probably after I said it. There’s just something so cool about horns and how they transport you to this other place.”
“It’s got kind of a little ’70s funk think to it,” added bandmate Charles Kelley of the song. “It needed horns, but also, too, we were laughing. It was like, ‘Man, can you put the horns in a country song?’ It was like there used to be horns all over the country. Johnny Cash and Ronnie Milsap. Even, I think, Brooks & Dunn, Kenny Chesney had some horns in some of their earlier records and it just felt like something we had never done before. Like I said Hillary had been begging for horns for the longest time and I just don’t think … We always kind of resisted it, it’s just it kind of scared us a little bit. Now it’s like, man, I want to take a horn section out on the road. We’re like, ‘I wonder if horns would go well with ‘Bartenter?’’”
The addition of the horns makes for not only a whole new dynamic to the song, but a whole new dynamic to the band, which is something the three had hoped for.
“It just adds a great level of energy to a song and we’ve had them play live with us on a few of these events and a few TV shows coming up we’ve got some horns playing with us live,” said Dave Haywood. “It just takes the whole thing up a notch. They’re just loud and in your face and it’s just such a fun musical kind of experiment and experience for us.”
Fans can look for Lady A (and their new bandmates!) on the road this summer on the trio’s You Look Good World Tour.
