Last year, Thomas Rhett threw a bit of a stylistic curveball to fans with his album “Country Again: Side A,” which moved away from the pop elements and modern production that had been a big part of recent albums like “Center Point Road” (2019) and “Life Changes” (2017), and featured a more organic, more country and more relaxed sound.
If not as big of a blockbuster hit as Rhett’s two preceding albums, “Country Again: Side A” got good reviews and produced two No. 1 singles, “What’s Your Country Song” and “Country Again.” But when Rhett tested songs from the album during an early 2021 run of shows at the famous club Billy Bob’s in Fort Worth, he felt the songs didn’t translate to the live stage the way he hoped.
Rhett ended up rejiggering his live set and found himself setting off on a different songwriting path that has now generated his recently released follow-up album, “Where We Started.”
Credit: John Shearer
Credit: John Shearer
“I’m beyond proud of ‘Country Again: Side A.’ I think I’ll look back when I’m 50 or 60 years old and think that was my favorite record that I ever made,” Rhett said in a mid-June phone interview. “But I also have to look back at that record and realize that every one of those songs that I wrote, I wrote in solitude. I was literally in my basement writing those songs on Zoom, and I’m dealing with the heaviness and the weight that the rest of the world was dealing with. By the time we got on the road, I started playing a lot of these kind of heavier songs and realized man, maybe there’s just too much heaviness that’s happened to continue to hear heavier, deeper songs.”
Rhett brought out co-writers throughout his tour last summer and by fall, he had the songs for “Where We Started.” He went into the studio looking to capture a different spirit than on “Country Again: Side A.”
“I think we just wanted to go in there with joy,” he said. “I wanted the recording process this time to not be so weighty and heavy and just have a blast doing it.”
“Where We Started” overall feels like a country record and he feels he didn’t go as crazy with the modern production as he did on “Life Changes” and “Center Point Road.” But Rhett didn’t forget his fans who like the poppier side of his music.
“I kind of wanted to give the people who fell in love with ‘Life Changes’ and ‘Center Point Road’ a few songs that kind of reminded them of that,” Rhett said. “But I also wanted to give a lot of songs to people who really loved ‘Country Again: Side A.’ There’s a little bit deeper of a piece of that on this record. I feel like as a whole, it’s one of the most well rounded albums that we’ve gotten to make.”
Credit: Amy Harris/Invision/AP
Credit: Amy Harris/Invision/AP
As Rhett referenced, the “Where We Started” album does share one important dimension of “Country Again: Side A,” with a trio of songs that go deeper lyrically than most country music. The ballads “The Hill” and “Angels” deal with meeting the challenges that come with marriage and long-term relationships, something Rhett knows about as a father of four young daughters who has been married to his wife, Lauren, since 2012.
“I think people always expect happy-go-lucky love songs from me, but these were two songs that really stuck out to me because I think they went deeper into what a marriage really is,” Rhett said. “After the honeymoon phase is no longer there, marriage really is a choice. My wife and I have chosen to stick with each other and love each other through our disagreements and our arguments, and I think that’s what makes a marriage so strong.”
A willingness to test musical boundaries without losing the country thread or accessibility of his music has made Rhett one of country’s top stars and most consistent hitmakers. The son of country star and songwriter Rhett Akins, Rhett’s debut album, 2013′s “It Goes Like This,” gave him breakout success. It landed three No. 1 singles on the Billboard magazine Country Airplay chart, including the album’s title track, which was co-written by his father.
Rhett has only seen his momentum grow over the course of five subsequent albums and his cache of No. 1 singles now numbers 19. Those hits will still be a cornerstone of his live shows this summer, which by the way, will have an element that ties into the title of the tour: “Bring The Bar To You.”
“This is for sure the longest show we’ve ever played,” Rhett said. “There were talks of trying to keep it as lengthy as we normally do, but man, when you’re trying to put 19 hits in there and also trying to play new music and also trying to play album cuts off of old records that are still, for some reason, very popular at our shows, I think we have a 25-, 26-song set list this year, which I’m really excited about. There’s going to be something for everybody.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
Thomas Rhett
7:30 p.m. July 22. $39.50-$120. Lakewood Amphitheatre, 1932 Pryor Road, Atlanta. 404-443-5000, www.livenation.com.
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