current single: “Beautiful As You”
Thomas Rhett just released his brand-new album, About A Woman, last Friday. It features 14 tracks, primarily written about and inspired by his wife, Lauren, including his latest single, “Beautiful As You.” About A Womanis the follow-up to Thomas’ Where We Started album, which he released over two years ago, and he used that time to put in a lot of hard work and effort to make sure this new album was his best one yet.
Thomas Rhett – magic in subtraction on album 1:01
“I think my two-word sentence for this record is progressive yet authentic. I feel like on every record I’m trying to always push myself sonically, vocally, melodically, and lyrically. And on this record, I feel like the way that it is different is that a lot of it is very simple. And I’m a writer that loves to like make things not simple. I really want you to sort of think really hard, like about like a hook or a second verse. And I feel like Julian does a great job at keeping things really simple. And from a vocal standpoint, there’s notes that I hit on this record that I’ve never dreamed that I could hit, which was terrifying and awesome. And I think also changing the tone of my voice, like, on ‘Can’t Love You Anymore,’ I sang it in a full half voice the entire way through the song. And on a song called ‘Boots,’ I tried to channel, you know, Elvis and Dwight Yoakam. And I’ve never really played a character on a son’ before, and so in many ways, a lot of that was challenging, but also brought a new joy and a new light to a lot of these tracks. And so, the writing process was a lot different, and just honestly trying to put a whole bunch of crap in there. And I feel like the magic was in the subtraction rather than in the addition.”
Besides wanting to make sure he is always progressing and always improving from one album to the next, Thomas Rhett says there was another very important factor driving the creativity and inspiration for the songs on About A Woman.
Thomas Rhett – challenging making album :48
“I think the most challenging part about continuing to make albums is that you’ve already covered so much ground. I’ve written a lot of songs about my kids, a lot of songs about my wife, a lot of songs about my friends, whatever it was. I think the challenging thing for this one was like finding the right 14 songs that said, hey, I love you, in new different ways. And I think my wife gave me the biggest mission on this album. And she was like, ‘You know, I love when you write songs about me, but I wish they weren’t so slow all the time.’ That was her comment to me. And so, it fired me up to, like, write these songs. Even if they started as a ballad or started kind of sappy, it was nice to have people like Julian and Dan and the co-writers to be like, hey, let’s just change the chords and let’s bump the BPM up by 30 and see what happens. So, it was a huge collaborative effort. And honestly, I wanted to play this record for my wife and her obviously be pumped that I wrote these about her, but also the fact that it made her want to dance at the same time.”
In addition to wanting to fulfill Lauren’s request for more uptempo love songs, Thomas Rhett says his new album, About A Woman, is a reflection of the season of life he is in right now.
Thomas Rhett – album reflects fun :22
“I’m in a very fun season of life right now. My wife and I both are. All four of our kids are in school three days a week, and we’ve never had this type of freedom in the last nine years. And so, we’re just getting to hang out more, and I think we’re sort of like rediscovering our youth as parents. And we’re staying out late. And like it sounds so Disney Channel to say that, but it’s where we are, and I think that is reflected in the music.”
