Little Big Town Discusses Embracing Imperfection and Rejecting AI on Their New Album (Exclusive)

Little Big Town never set out to be perfect. As the latest guests on American Songwriter’s Off the Record podcast, Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Phillip Sweet, and Jimi Westbrook told host Lisa Konicki about how AI influenced their decision to keep things real on their latest album, It’s a Dying Art.

“In this artificial age of intelligence, you still can’t replace the humanity that happens when harmonies are sung imperfectly, flat, sharp,” Fairchild said. “That is the beauty of why the harmony buzzes and feels like it has life in it. When you take that out, it’s very vanilla and stale. So, this record especially, [producer] Gena [Johnson] is so good at getting very intimate. You can hear the throat, feel like you’re in the room. That was really important.”

With that in mind, Westbrook said he hopes that Little Big Town’s decision to stay away from AI and release something real and raw encourages others to “embrace imperfection” too.

“Those qualities, those things about humanity are what actually, I think, attracts us to things. It’s the ragged edges. That’s the character. And that’s the way life is,” he said. “Hopefully it’ll push us. I think it will. There’s a lot of great music coming out right now. And I think people are being more inspired in that direction to come back to authentic and real.”

While “AI is cool” and “fun,” Westbrook said that it simply can’t “replace that intangible thing in whatever you’re doing.”

“There’s just that thing. It’s like that connection you feel at a live show with somebody. It’s not about all the perfect stuff going on, it’s just that spirit,” he said. “… I just don’t think you can fake that.”

Little Big Town Shares the Intended Themes of Their Latest LP

The band agreed. Recognizing that they were “creatively tired” after a series of back-to-back releases and tours, Little Big Town decided to take a rare break and come back even better.

“When we started playing songs for each other, we realized we had a really great group of songs to begin with,” Fairchild said of the band’s post-break realization. “… We were like, ‘Let’s just make music and see what happens.’”

What wound up happening was something special. It’s a Dying Art, which was released on Aug. 28, became “a timestamp of the moment we’re in right now,” Sweet said.

“For me, it takes everything that we’ve experienced into a new place, a new expansion, a new evolution,” he said. “[It’s] refined, but also in ways raw and more real than ever before.”

“It dissects some difficult moments in relationships. And then it also gives a lot of hope and, hopefully, joy for the things that matter the most,” Fairchild added. “That kind of ebbs and flows through the record.”

As a whole, the band hopes the LP encourages “unity” and that listeners “come together” when they hear it, Schlapman said. Meanwhile, Westbrook noted that he’s aiming for “some hope and good vibes” with the release.

That intended joy is perhaps most felt on the lead single, “Hey There Sunshine.”

“In what feels like very divisive times, we felt like that was an important thing to say, to give people that push to get up and live their life again when they’ve been in a dark spot,” Fairchild said. “I think that has always been something that we’re passionate about as a band.”

“That song is special, and it’s healing,” Schlapman agreed. “I think all in all, the reason that song was first was because that message was so important. Probably the most important message on the whole record is that.”