When Leon Bridges made his debut with Coming Home in 2015, the record charted high worldwide, because Bridges’ throwback sound is relatable enough to appeal to a boundary-spanning audience, and fresh enough where it doesn’t just sound like your parents threw one of their favorite old CDs on. Now he’s ready to follow that record up, and so far, his sophomore record sounds just as exciting: Good Thing will be released on May 4th, and Bridges premiered two new songs, “Bet Ain’t Worth The Hand” and “Bad Bad News,” on Zane Lowe’s Beats 1 Apple Radio show today. Both songs were produced and co-written by Ricky Reed, who executive produced the new album.
Bridges told Lowe that “Bet Ain’t Worth The Hand” is about trouble committing in a relationship:
“This song came from a recent relationship that I’ve been in, but I think the whole thing is about never being grounded enough to commit to a serious relationship. It’s an overall breakup song, you know, but I wanted to make something that kind of took the elements from my first album Coming Home but incorporating a new modern R&B sound to it.”
Lowe also asked about “Bad Bad News” and whether or not the song is influenced by social and political things going on the world right now, to which Bridges responded:
“I wanted to put that kind of message through songs like “Bad Bad News” and for me, I grew up with certain people telling me that I couldn’t be great. And that’s the whole message of that song is just making something out of nothing.”
https://twitter.com/Beats1/status/973592019963654144
Listen to “Bet Ain’t Worth The Hand” and “Bad Bad News” above.
