During a recent chat with Audacy's Rob + Holly, Thomas Rhett talked all about his brand new music, having too much time to tweak songs, taking a different approach on his new album, and more.
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Praising Rhett’s new material, which they got a sneak peek to, Holly went on to note how “every song is a good song, every song is a car song. Every song you're gonna wanna roll your window down… put your arm out the window.”
Wondering if that was his intention, Thomas admitted that while he does like to test out his songs in the car, the amount of time he’s had to do so is reaching its limit. “Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think at this point, I think I've had too much time… I think it's a blessing and a curse to have this much time to make an album because I think the blessing is that you have the time to, you know, go back and fix and tweak and change a lyric or change the melody or change a production or whatever. But the curse is that you have that time and I think you can kind of tweak yourself into oblivion.”
“I think you can kind of keep going in and keep adding and keep adding and keep taking away. But I feel like we're in a really good spot. This is genuinely the most excited I have ever been about an album release."
Admitting “the first song was written for this project maybe a year and a half ago,” Thomas is finally ready to share the album with the world. Revealing his plans to drop the project, Rhett disclosed that after dropping “Beautiful As You,” on May 10, he plans on “dropping a song a month, until August 23rd, which is when the album comes out.”
Discussing the single, Rob + Holly asked their usual three questions, Where were you? What were you thinking? What were you drinking? And adding in a fourth and fifth — Who were you with? And what were you wearing? All of which Thomas got to answering.
“I was on a writing trip, slash writing camp thing in Chattanooga, Lookout Mountain,” Thomas shared. “I can remember we rented this house that overlooked the whole Valley of Chattanooga. And I was with Julian Bunetta, Jay Cash, and John Ryan who are three guys that are L.A. based. And we wrote a lot of this record together.” Going on to note, “I was probably wearing sweatpants and I was drinking tequila.” As for the particular tequila he prefers, that would of course be Dos Primos, the Country star’s very own tequila brand that he started five years ago.
Talking about taking a different approach with this project, Thomas expressed, “My mission for this album was like, I want my kids and my wife to dance to this album.” Noting it “passed the test, beyond any other album that I’ve gotten to put out and that puts a smile on my face.”
“I think a lot of my records, there’s been a lot of ballads on a lot of my records, and on this one in particular we picked one, which is like terrifying to me,” Thomas admitted.
“But also… when you go down the list of these songs,” he added, “they’re all so unique and so different and we really explored a lot of different sounds and a lot of different melody structures. And I even approached, you know, this record vocally different than any other record I've done.”
“I feel like the single ‘Beautiful As You’ is a really good first vibe into what you're about to get when you listen to the rest of the project. I'm really fired up. I've got to play this for some of my fans as well, and I think this is going to be the most well received album from my fans that I've ever released. So I'm more than excited.”
To hear more from Thomas about not taking things to seriously, evolving as an artist, the album recording process and more, check out his full conversation with Audacy’s Rob + Holly above.
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