When Taylor Swift offered the song “Babe,” which she co-wrote with Pat Monahan of Train, to Sugarland to record, they were excited to see what they could do with it. And then when Taylor offered to sing on the song with them, it was an even more exciting proposition for Jennifer and Kristian, because they realized that having Taylor on one of their songs might open up their music to a whole new group of fans. As Kristian explains, “(Taylor) has this particular voice and Jennifer has a particular voice and they’re both very identifiable, which is kind of one of the fun things for me on this particular song. If you were to play it for someone who didn’t know, at what point does the needle go, ‘Oh! I know who that is.’ And how fun is that? Wouldn’t that be cool if somebody found Sugarland because they heard somebody that they went, ‘Oh my gosh I love that. That’s my favorite artist of all time,’ [and they] suddenly found their way into our world. We accept.”
In fact, Taylor recently performed “Babe” during one of her reputation tour stops, and the crowd went nuts, which means whether they were aware of Sugarland before or not, they definitely know who they are now, and love at least one of their songs.
Sugarland – Babe recording with Taylor :54
Jennifer Nettles – “In a very generous gesture she first offered it and said, ‘Look here is the song how I have presented it before. Listen to it. If that fits with what you’re doing I’d be happy to be a part of this with you.’ And so we were like, Taylor Swift’s gonna sing on our record. Okay, well, let’s see”
Kristian Bush – “Okay, so here’s a real conversation. How do these two voices fit together from a producer standpoint? You know, that’s a lot of the language I speak, because she has this particular voice and Jennifer has a particular voice and they’re both very identifiable, which is kind of one of the fun things for me on this particular song. If you were to play it for someone who didn’t know, at what point does the needle go, ‘Oh! I know who that is.’ And how fun is that? Wouldn’t that be cool if somebody found Sugarland because they heard somebody that they went, ‘Oh my gosh I love that. That’s my favorite artist of all time,’ suddenly found their way into our world. We accept.