Jennifer Nettles and Christian Bush you know them as Sugarland and I am so excited that they are back together making new music and we're celebrating their brand new album Bigger which is available now and there's a song on this album that I know everybody wants to know about and before we get to all the juicy parts talking about your friend Taylor Swift for people who haven't necessarily heard the song a lot or maybe haven't paid attention to the lyrics what is Babe about? Babe is a perfect representation of I think what from a songwriting perspective what Taylor Swift does very well it is very confessional and it is very much you want to talk about what we talk about and being in the moment in your life and putting it out there you know this is something whenever she wrote it that at the time was very much on her mind and on her heart we shall say yeah and so so it's very authentic in that way in its offering it is the story of a breakup it is the story of a betrayal and it is the story of really getting to confront that person and to say like well we're not gonna make it through this one babe so that's the scene the scene is really cool and it very much sits in the same kind of empowerment like in the scene how do you create a space that empowers the woman the most mm-hmm right and that's very Sugarland that makes sense why she was like I mean I'm imagining she but why she sent it and said hey guys look if you guys are getting back together why not would you like this yeah and interestingly enough no one's really ever shopped us a song because we write them all right we cover songs a lot we live yeah like we even put like a live album yeah life in a northern town even got a Grammy nomination because we love cover songs we want to do with the best we can and in this case it was just a heightened sense of anxiety for me because it's somebody else's baby you know and somebody else's babe I can only imagine what it would be like to get it back and we knew she was a fan of what we do and what if it were fleeter center back something terrible oh my gosh how would you even talk about so it made me want to work like seven times yeah not only that but her fans are voracious so if you like I mean if we screwed up a Taylor Swift song and you imagine please yeah Swifties will let you know when they're not happy with you but you know I did want to ask you you guys write all of your own songs so regardless of the fact that this came from Taylor Swift did you know immediately that you wanted to record babe or did you have to sit with it for a while what was it about the song that drew you to it enough to say yep we want to put that on our album we knew immediately it was good yeah we put it on the pile but we had just started writing and we didn't really know and we wanted to make sure too that it would also fit within like we wanted to do it justice by having it fit within the collection that we were making because you didn't want something to suddenly stand out sonically as odd that wouldn't have served it either but she was right on and knowing that it would fit as a Sugarland song and thankfully I mean I'm grateful that she trusted us enough to do it because it's not something that she does very often PS you know so I feel I feel pretty honored to be in that very very short list well in addition to the fact that she co-wrote the song let's talk about the fact that Taylor Swift actually sings on babe with you guys so tell me about that process and how she ended up recording this song with you 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 you know be a part of this with you and so we were like hey let's whip in this thing on our record okay well let's see okay so here's a real conversation how did these two voices fit together from a producer standpoint because you know that's a lot of the language I speak is very well thank you because she has a 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 because they we used to do that I remember the first time I ever heard the indigo girls on an album there was a voice that showed up two-thirds of the way through a song and I went oh my god that's Michael Stipe and I just about lost my mind because I was a huge REM fan yes and I was just introduced the indigo girls for the first time and I was like what is going on this is kind of cool I like this I well oh my gosh yeah so I got turned on to a band that became a seminal band that changed most of the way that I see songwriting and music based on the fact that I was a huge fan of another band wouldn't that be cool if somebody found Sugarland because they heard somebody that they went oh my gosh I love that like that's my favorite artist of all time and suddenly found their way into our world we accept and I've had that experience before so I care for it very much on recording that would be incredibly cool I have a feeling a lot of Taylor Swift fans are gonna be seeking this song out because it is such a good song I just love it she talked about the fact that she wrote this during her red album phase and you guys sound so good together on this it's called babe and you'll find it on Sugarland's new album bigger which is available now