If you know anything about Thomas Rhett, it’s that his family is everything to him.
His seventh studio album, About A Woman, arrived today (August 23) and is perhaps his most progressive work yet, as it encompasses his creative prosperity thanks to storylines that center around his family in mind yet reflect on his commercial success.
“From top to bottom, I just wanted to exude joy and fun, and really just make people move. I was thinking like, ‘Man, I haven’t just made a record that my kids and my wife want to dance to in a while. So, how do I make that possible? I feel like if you were to ask me what this record is about, the answer would be it’s about one woman, my wife, and I think we got the opportunity to say ‘I love you’ in a lot of different ways,” Thomas shared in a statement.
Leaning more towards uptempo tracks rather than the ballads everyone knows him for, Thomas reveals that he started the selection process for About A Woman with 150 songs, which quickly dwindled down to 50. Soon, he had 14 songs that he “just couldn’t live without.” He co-wrote all but one song on the project and enlisted the help of producers Dann Huff and Julian Bunetta (One Direction, Sabrina Carpenter, Teddy Swims) to bring this vision to life.
“I think that picking 14 songs was really complicated for me because you’re always looking at what other people are doing,” Thomas says in a press conference regarding the album’s track listing.
“I would say it’s becoming really popular to put a bunch of songs on a record, you know, whether that’s 20, 30, 40 songs, or double or triple albums. There’s so much music that comes out every day and especially every Friday, like when I see records that have 20 or more songs on ‘em, I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I have time to sit and listen to that in one sitting. I wanted this to be a very digestible record.”
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TR has amassed 22 No.1 hits to date and wanted to sustain his knack of crafting love songs for his wife Lauren, but this time wanted to make sure she can dance to it.
The album’s lead single “Beautiful As You” rings true to this as the songsmith calls it “an anthem for everybody who feels like they out-kicked their coverage,” while “Gone Country,” “Overdrive” and “After All the Bars Are Closed” are all soaked in chill-country, feel-good progressives sounds.
“Something ‘Bout a Woman” is a slow-burn soulful offering while “Can’t Love You Anymore” pays homage to Eric Church. “Boots” and “Fool” are both immensely playful, funky and honky tonk, while “I Don’t Wanna Dance” is built on Whitney Houston’s smash hit “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me).”
Now a father of four, Rhett’s life has changed for the better. As the girls age, he’s candid about their own musical tastes reveals that they’re not shy if there is a song that they are not a fan of.
“I am thinking a lot as a parent now and not to get super deep, all my kids are in school and my seven-year-old and my nine-year-old are now forming opinions about what they like and don’t like musically,” Thomas told Celeb Secrets writer Brianna Vacca during a press conference for the project. “They’re taking hip-hop class and ballet and they’re going to school and birthday parties where they hear all different types of music. So they look at me now and now say, ‘Hey, I know you’re my dad, but I don’t like that song.’ They’re able to look at me with an honest, like musical knowledge, opinion and be like, ‘Hey, this is cool and this is not.’”
And while he takes his children’s feedback very seriously, TR says the biggest thing he’s learned about himself while making this project is how far he can push himself across all aspects of the creative process.
“I’m always trying to push myself sonically, vocally, melodically and lyrically. From a vocal standpoint, there’s notes that I hit on this record that I’ve never dreamed that I could hit. And then changing my voice on ‘Can’t Love You Anymore,’ I sang it in a full half voice and the entire way through the song and on a song called ‘Boots,’ I tried to channel Elvis and Dwight Yoakum and I’ve never played a character on a song before. So in many ways a lot of that was challenging, but it also brought a new joy and a new light to these tracks,” he shares.
Take a listen to Thomas Rhett’s new album About A Woman below and let us know if you’re loving it by either leaving a reaction at the bottom of the post or by sliding into our DMs on Instagram at @celebsecretscountry.
You can connect with Thomas by giving him a follow on Instagram at @thomasrhettakins.
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