Little Big Town Says They Never Asked Taylor Swift Why She Didn’t Keep ‘Better Man’ for Herself
“We just said, ‘Thank you very much, we’ll take it,'” Kimberly Schlapman told host Hoda Kotb.
Little Big Town has been enjoying the success of their beautiful breakup ballad “Better Man.” But how did the record penned by Taylor Swift end up on the country music group’s album?
“We’ve been friends with her forever,” Karen Fairchild told Hoda Kotb of Swift on Monday’s show. “She emailed Phillip [Sweet] one night, and she said, ‘Hey, I keep thinking about this song that I wrote and wondering if it might be for y’all. So listen to it and see what you think.’ She sent [the demo] in the email, and he forwarded it to us.”
Little Big Town was touring with Luke Bryan when they received the track and said they couldn’t get it out of their heads.
“We were touring all this year, so we would live with it for a few weeks and kept listening to it,” Sweet said. “We kept coming back to it and couldn’t get away from it. It was sticking with us, too, so we had to cut it.”
Once they started letting other artists take a listen, they knew they had something big on their hands.
“We were playing it for Luke and Dustin Lynch while we were on the road,” Fairchild said. “They were like, ‘That one.’ You could see the reaction from people.”
Released on October 20, “Better Man” reached No. 1 on the iTunes Country Music Chart and peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Country Music Chart. The anticipation is palpable for Little Big Town’s eighth studio album, “The Breaker,” which is set to be released on February 24, 2017.
Even with the success of “Better Man,” the band members never wondered why Swift — who officially crossed over into pop with her album “1989” — didn’t just record the song herself.
“We didn’t ask,” Kimberly Schlapman said with a laugh. “We just said, ‘Thank you very much, we’ll take it.'”
Sweet added, “She wanted us to do it, and we were very honored to take it on and try our best at it.”
