After numerous US Country No.1s, Lady Antebellum disappeared in 2014… to the point where some fans thought they’d actually split up. But now they’re back with chart-topping album Heart Break and an updated Lady A sound that may surprise. Lady Antebellum have won five Grammys, six CMA awards, sold more than 18 million units, and notched up nine No.1 hits… Indeed, the trio seem such an all-powerful, unstoppable force bestriding the country music world, you’d think they would allow themselves to kick back and enjoy the ride. Yet singer Charles Kelley says they’re now back from a two-year hiatus with trepidation: as he puts it bluntly, “You always have a bit of that fear.” In the world that superstars such as Lady Antebellum orbit, stakes were high – after all, 2014’s 747 only made No.2. But now that their new album Heart Break is finally out, Kelley’s relief is palpable. “To me it’s all about the fans’ response,” he says. “You wonder if they’ll be excited and interested. And so far… the response seems to be great.” Scooting back to Lady Antebellum’s 2014 studio album, 747, you could be forgiven for thinking that their follow-up was actually called-‘Hiatus’. In fact, some doubters seemed convinced that Kelley and his Lady A bandmates Hillary Scott (vocals) and Dave Haywood (guitars, piano, mandolin), were splitting up when they announced they’d be taking some ‘down time’. In the music business, such statements about ‘time away and ‘working on other projects’ often really mean: ‘we’re done.’ Truth was, it was the truth. All three of Lady A decided they would continue, but it was time to temporarily turn off the spotlights. “We needed some time to step away and live some life,” smiles Kelley. “We always come right off the tour and make a record, then go out on tour again to promote the record. We didn’t want to jump right into the recording process this time.” Not only did they live their lives – Scott now has a daughter and both Haywood and Kelley have a son each – but they also scratched their other musical itches with solo projects. “Lady Antebellum is its own specific thing,” explains Kelley, “and with Lady A, we can’t go necessarily down whatever road that each of us wants to go down individually.” Their tastes are different too. Kelley says he wouldn’t want to make a religious album, but totally accepts that, “Hillary has always wanted to do a Christian record with her family, they’re very spiritual.” And Kelley in turn had always longed to do something that’s more of a throwback to Californian country or southern rock, which isn’t Scott’s kind of thing. Meanwhile, Haywood – as the muso of the band – went off and flexed his musician muscles by producing a new country trio, Post Monroe. Charles Kelley insist Lady A’s break has been a win-win situation. “It was a way for us to show a different side of ourselves artistically. You see a lot of rock groups who’ve done that, but for us it was a nice way to take a break, try something new, and get a little bit of this stuff out of our system.” The big bonus was that it made them eager to get back in the studio again and play together as Lady A. “All three of us talked about how much we’d missed the process. And I think the fans will see a change, and will wonder what we’re going to do next.” One thing that Kelley, Scott and Haywood all agreed on this time was that they wanted the new album, Heart Break, to be fresh and not repeat themselves. They themselves wrote 11 of the 13 songs, the most they’ve ever done for a record: “There’s a lot of our personal stories in this one,” he says. They’d previously felt pressure to make sure they’d got enough hits to keep their career going. But this time they asked themselves what they really loved, says Kelley, then let the hits come out of that. “We really didn’t know what was going to be a hit song, and we were writing from a very innocent standpoint. We weren’t trying to write hits – just songs that felt authentic to us.” Something in the Airbnb To help their creativity, the trio decamped to a beach house in Florida that they’d rented online from Airbnb. “We had this vision of going and maybe writing down on the beach,” laughs Kelley, “but we spent pretty much the entire week holed up inside. We liked it so much, and we were having so much fun, we’d start writing stuff from 10am, all the way up until 2am the next morning. We wrote something like nine songs in five days, it was just pouring out of us.” There were no rules in their writing sessions. Sometimes they’d start with a melody, as with the title track. “We had a melodic thing going, then Dave and Hillary came into the room and Dave said, ‘I’ve got this idea of giving your heart a break’. So a ‘heart break’ becomes two different words. And I was like: that’s brilliant, dude. All of a sudden we were throwing out lines onto this melody we’d created.” The final piece of the jigsaw was getting exactly the right producer and the trio turned to Busbee. “We knew he was a talented guy, but with that Maren Morris record [Hero, Morris’ breakthrough album of 2016 which Busbee helmed], we just felt it was so great, so edgy, but it still had this authentic, timeless feel in the way he was breaking tracks.” Crucially, as well as bringing fun and energy to the process, says Kelley, Busbee also brought some tough love. The three would play him a song and he’d say, it sounds like a hit, but it doesn’t sound like a Lady Antebellum hit. “He really pushed us to dig deep,” admits Kelley, “He wanted to make
