Thomas Rhett chronicles his ‘Life Changes’ Cindy Watts
New album pays tribute to his daughters and the genres he grew up listening to
Thomas Rhett drinks a lot of coffee these days — and he’s about to drink even more.
Thomas Rhett and his wife, Lauren, adopted their daughter Willa Gray from Uganda in May. His wife is due to give birth to their second daughter Aug. 8. And Rhett’s highly anticipated third album will be delivered exactly one month later.
Thomas Rhett’s Life Changes will be available Sept. 8. Stacked with songs about love, life and growing up, the collection is a diverse personal reflection of the soon-to-be father of two. The album is home to Thomas Rhett’s eighth No. 1 song, Craving You, which is a duet with Maren Morris, and his new single, Unforget
table, is available Friday. The country singer co-wrote 10 of the album’s 14 songs that sonically range from the early ’90s country throwback Drink a Little
Beer featuring his father, singer/ songwriter Rhett Akins, to his EDM-influenced Leave Right
Now. Co-written with West Coast writers Julian Bunetta, Edward Drewett and John Henry Ryan, Thomas Rhett said Leave Right
Now is the first song he’s written in an “EDM headspace” and he was “scared to give it away.”
“I want people to come in from different genres and be like, ‘Dang, I never really listened to country music, but this record kind of turns me on in different ways,’ ” the singer explained. “I think that’s why I recorded so many different types of songs on this record and really just tried to write what I know about.”
The title track Life Changes is the best autobiography Thomas Rhett said he could write. The progressive mid-tempo chronicles the singer’s life from his carefree college days to marrying his childhood sweetheart and start- ing the adoption process, only to find out she was pregnant.
There was snow on the ground the February day Thomas Rhett, his dad and songwriters Ashley Gorley and Jesse Frasure met to write. At the time, the singer and his wife were midway through the adoption process and he was traveling to Africa every week he had off to spend time with his wife and their new daughter.
“I was probably venting to the room, like ‘You all, I don’t know what is happening in my life right now. ... How am I going to keep up this pace?’ ” he recalled.
He refers to Renegades as his “inner Tom Petty” and explains
Sixteen as “Merle Haggard meets Eric Church meets Corey Smith.”
“I tried to channel my inner storyteller and force the listener to listen to three different choruses that tell you something different,” Thomas Rhett said. He co-wrote Sixteen and Sweetheart with Sean Douglas and Joe Spargur, the same writers with whom he co-wrote his multiweek No. 1 song Die a Happy Man.
Given his early love of country music, Thomas Rhett believes he will always be a storyteller. But, he also grew up listening to hiphop, R&B, rock and soul — all influences heard on Life Changes.
“There was a ton of discussion ... about how do these songs get to co-exist on the same record,” he said. “But ... it’s all me and all things I’ve listened to and been inspired by. I think that’s what makes it a cohesive Thomas Rhett album.”