Still sweet! Sugarland back after a break
More than five years later, Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush return with same chemistry and trust.
The temperature in Las Vegas had dipped to the mid-80s by the time Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush took the stage in the outdoor beach area at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Sept. 2,
2012. Nettles had braided her blond hair into pigtails. Bush, like always, donned a narrow black cowboy hat pulled low on his forehead. Since Sugarland had broken onto the country scene with its hit Baby Girl eight years before, the two had charted seven No. 1 songs, sold
10 million albums and played more than 1,000 concerts side by side.
But when Bush turned to meet Nettles’ gaze on the final song of the show — the song from which Sugarland took their name, the same song she auditioned with to join the group in 2002 — he didn’t know if or when they’d ever share a stage again. The concert was their last on the books.
“It was this interesting, very personal moment for me,” Bush recalled. “We had come full circle.”
Their self-imposed open-ended hiatus started the next day. Nettles was pregnant, and after she gave birth, she wanted to pursue other projects.
Bush had just emerged from a lengthy divorce. He was overwhelmed, but songs of hope swirled through his head.
More than five years later, Sugarland is back. The duo’s new song, Still the Same, is now on country radio. Nettles and Bush will launch an arena tour in May and recently finished recording Sugarland’s fifth studio album, Bigger, out June 8.
Before the hiatus, “they had great energy, and they were very hip,” said Marci Braun, program director at
country radio station US99 in Chicago. “The great thing is that through the years, not to be punny, but they are still the same. They still fit into the fabric of any radio station.”
It was early March, and Nettles and Bush are holed up in a Nashville rehearsal space. In two days, the two will leave to play shows in Europe. In 24 hours, Bush has to start mixing the album. The sense of urgency is palpable. But when Nettles and Bush sink into couches on their lunch break, they bubble with excitement over the reunion and the music they’ve created.
“We giggle all the time,” Bush says, recalling an offhand comment he had made. “I was just joking …”
“I wasn’t,” Nettles fires back, not needing further explanation. “I thought it was hilarious.”
“I said, ‘ You know, we have a lot of friends who are going to be pretty upset with us,’ ” Bush recalls. “We just skipped bro country.”
“It worked out great for me as a woman,” Nettles says, breaking into James Brown’s It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.
The two are very much still the same. The chemistry is there. Their trust in each other is intact. Their creative vision is in lockstep. But their situations are different. Nettles is now a mother with three solo albums and two Dolly Parton television specials to her credit. Bush is a single dad, an in-demand country music producer and a songwriter with a musical and solo project under his belt. The country genre has shifted, and gun violence and sexual assault scandals have rocked the nation.
The differences drive Sugarland’s comeback. They didn’t understand it when they re-emerged together for the first time, shocking the audience at the CMA Awards in November. They do now.
“I think there’s something with Sugarland that is a higher calling,” Nettles says. “What we’ve been writing for this new record, it is clear we had things inside of us that we felt the world needed to hear.”
Nettles and Bush didn’t jump into the reunion with both feet. They had a date — a songwriting date, to see if they could still work together. Bush flew to New York City at the end of August and met Nettles in a rehearsal room. He set his suitcase in the corner, not bothering to check into a hotel. They hadn’t written a song together in seven years. They started, and it felt like riding a bike.
“It was fun,” Bush recalls of the session in which they sketched out Still the Same. “It was like, ‘ Oh, yeah, we grab things quick.’ We grab them out of the air, and they bounce real easy.”
They scheduled another writing session for two weeks out. Days before, Nettles called Bush with a change of plans. Instead of writing again, she wanted to record the song. Bush scrambled to get a band to New York City. When he pushed the recording button three days later, Sugarland knocked out two songs — Still the Same and On a Roll, another song the two started during the first songwriting session.
Nettles played Bush’s work tapes of the songs for Big Machine Label Group founder and CEO Scott Borchetta while they were in Canada. His reaction was instant — he thought the songs were “smash” hits.
Sugarland didn’t write together again until after the holidays. Again, Bush flew to New York City and met Nettles in the same rehearsal room. With two four-day sessions of collaboration, they finished the album.
While flying to one of the writing sessions in February, Bush heard about a school shooting and thought of his children. He asked himself what his kids feared and how to address it.
By the time he got off the plane, he had a few lines written down. When he showed it to Nettles, they started to explore the idea. She asked for 45 minutes alone with his notes at the piano. He eagerly agreed.
“This is not about whether you should have a gun or not,” he says. “It’s about, ‘ What do you tell a kid?’ It’s a whole different conversation.”
Sugarland recorded the final nine songs for the album in three days at the end of February. There are messages about empowerment. Invitations to rise above the chaos. Insight into what it’s like to be an American in 2018 and offerings about tragedy and brokenness.
“I think we have the wonderful ability to invite questions rather than point fingers,” Nettles says.
Not all the songs are heavy. Nettles says many of the tracks are fun, and Bush says the collection is packed with “serious grooves.” The two will embark on their first arena tour in five years in May. They had to have songs that spoke to fans’ hearts and pulled people out of their seats.
“I’m sitting with it, and now I get it,” Bush says. “This was never about us. It’s about what happens when (Sugarland) sits down and makes stuff. And when we sit down and make stuff, it’s about you. ... That’s why we go play it in front of people — because it’s theirs.”
Sugarland will make no promises about the future. Nettles and Bush want to see how the new music resonates.
“What we have done for our fans, I hope, is show them they can trust there are times when we will come apart, and there are times when we will come back together,” Nettles says. “I love that we have done exactly what we said we were going to do. We took time and … we came back.”