Little Big Town are sneakily working their way back into country music’s good graces after the hard left turn they took with Pharrell Williams on this year’s Wanderlust. And if you’re looking for a hit, a melancholic slow-burner about toxic relationships written by Taylor Swift is about as sure of a thing as you can get.
Rolling Stone reports that the group’s new single “Better Man” was produced by Jay Joyce and written by Taylor Swift, but it manages to keep from feeling like an out-and-out stunt, by virtue of everyone involved being really, really good at what they do. Karen Fairchild’s vocals walk the line and convey both yearning to go back and being strong enough to go forward, and the group still has some of pop-country’s best harmonies.
And let’s be real, do we even need to talk about how good Taylor Swift is at examining the wreckage of a ruined relationship? If you didn’t know that before lines like “Sometimes in the middle of the night I can feel you again / But I just miss you, and I just wish you were a better man,” then you’ve been in a deep coma for more than a decade. Damn.
“Better Man” is our first glimpse of Little Big Town’s new album The Breaker, which is out on February 24.
