Sugarland released a new song, “Babe,” from its upcoming sixth studio album, Bigger, which drops on June 8.
The new album, which was co-produced by Julian Raymond and Sugarland’s Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles, features 11 songs, 10 of which were co-written by Kristian and Jennifer.
The outlier is “Babe,” a song penned by Taylor Swift and Train’s Pat Monahan that features vocals from Taylor.
“We’ve obviously known [Taylor] for many years,” says Jennifer. “And she was excited we were getting back together and reached out, and said, ‘Hey, I have a song.’ That is a short list, ladies and gentleman, of people to whom she has said, ‘Hey, I have a song. Wanna sing it?’ So, we said, ‘Yeah.’”
“We’ve never really put a song by anybody else on any of our records, so we weren’t really used to kinda sorting through that, and we didn’t want to mess it up,” says Kristian. “So we didn’t tell anybody about it, until we got finished. And she liked it, thank God.”
Taylor posted a video on Instagram on April 20, letting her fans know how happy she is that Sugarland recorded the tune, as well as sharing the song’s origin, which Taylor says she initially co-wrote for her Red album in 2012.
“Hey guys, I just wanted to say thank you so much for all the nice things you’ve been saying about ‘Babe,’” said Taylor, in part. “It’s a song I wrote with Pat Monahan when I was making the Red album. I’m so happy that that it gets its own life. I’m so happy that Sugarland wanted to record it and has done such a great job with it. And I’m so stoked to be able to sing on it, too.”
Listen to “Babe” below.
