Little Big Town's Kimberly Schlapman (l) sings with Sugarland's Jennifer Nettles during Sugarland's The Incredible Machine Tour.

Sugarland is known for covering an eclectic mix of songs in concert — for example, Kings of Leon’s “Sex On Fire” and the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.”

Their newest cover song is one from Madonna, which makes sense since Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush are both children of the ’80s and have said the songs on their latest album were influenced by that era. On their The Incredible Machine tour stop in Bloomington, IL last Friday (March 18), they invited Little Big Town onstage for a rendition of the Material Girl’s 1989 hit, “Like A Prayer.” It’s not the first time LBT has shared a cover song with Sugarland. They also merged harmonies in 2007-08 on another ’80s tune, The Dream Academy’s “Life In A Northern Town” (also featuring Jake Owen). The country “supergroup” version of “Life In A Northern Town” was a Top 40 country hit in 2008 and was also nominated for a GRAMMY, ACM and CMA awards.

Watch “Like A Prayer”  below and tell us your thoughts. Continue Reading

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Sugarland photo by Jennifer Tzar, courtesy of UMG Nashville.

Sugarland hit the scene with “Baby Girl” and have been making their own rules ever since.  Their shows are electric and their tunes have a way of getting stuck in your head … “whoa-oh, whoa-oh, stuck like glue…” Whether they bring you to your feet or your knees, Sugarland knows how to make fans feel something different.

Have you seen this dynamic duo live? If you haven’t, you don’t want to miss the premiere of Sugarland: The Incredible Machine TONIGHT – Monday, March 14 at 10/9c! Get your sneak peek HERE!

In this week’s GAC Trivia Time*, we thought we’d give you some fun facts about Jennifer Nettles & Kristian Bush:

Jul 26, 2002 – Singer-songwriter Kristian Bush asks his wife for one more year to pursue music as a career. Some 362 days later, his band Sugarland does a showcase that nets a recording deal, preventing him from settling for life as a website designer

Aug 8, 2002 – Sugarland makes its first public appearance onstage, singing the only four numbers that the band knows

Sep 16, 2003 – Sugarland signs a recording deal with Mercury Records

Nov 12, 2004 – Sugarland performs “Baby Girl” during its Grand Ole Opry debut Continue Reading

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Sugarland photo by Jennifer Tzar, courtesy of UMG Nashville.

“Do it, do it, one time.”

Sugarland might sing that line in the current Top 5 hit “Stuck Like Glue,” but the “one time” reference is already out of date — if you want to interpret the “it” they’re singing about as debuting at No. 1 on the country albums charts.

The duo’s new release, The Incredible Machine, sold more than 202,000 copies last week following its Oct. 19 release, launching it to No. 1 on the Billboard country albums chart as well as the all-genre Billboard 200. It’s actually the third time Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush have had a No. 1 debut. They also turned that trick with Love On The Inside and last year’s concert album Live On The Inside.

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Taylor Swift photo courtesy of Big Machine Records.

Taylor Swift couldn’t ask for much better timing. As she heads into the last week of promotion for her new album, Speak Now, she was named Songwriter/Artist of the Year Sunday night during the Nashville Songwriters Association International’s annual songwriter awards at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel.

Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin took Song of the Year for penning the emotional Miranda Lambert hit “The House That Built Me,” and Chris DuBois earned Songwriter of the Year for his work as an author of Craig Morgan’s “This Ain’t Nothin’” and the Brad Paisley singles “Then” and “Welcome To The Future.”

The awards were part of a formal evening that saw four new members added to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and had 11 titles recognized by the songwriting community as the cream of the crop: Songs I Wish I’d Written. That list included “Need You Now,” “White Liar,” “Big Green Tractor” and Taylor’s “You Belong With Me.”

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Sugarland photo courtesy of UMG Nashville.

Sugarland is at work on a new album with the title The Incredible Machine, but while the name has a mechanical tone to it, that doesn’t mean the duo is treating it like factory work.

There’s only one ballad scheduled for the project, dominated by uptempo songs that Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles tried to fill with very human qualities. They’re not turning their backs on country music, but they believe the Machine will connect with a lot of pop fans as they try to find new ways to play with Jennifer’s voice.

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Heidi Newfield photo by Erick Anderson, courtesy of Curb/Asylum Records.

The 11th annual Country Music Marathon and Half-Marathon will have 30,000 runners clogging the streets of Music Row and downtown Nashville on Saturday, and Heidi Newfield has a strong connection to the event.

She appears that night, along with John Rich and Cowboy Troy, in the post-race concert at the Bridgestone Arena. Heidi’s not expected to actually participate in the run — it’d be asking a lot for her to belt out “Johnny And June” after running 13 or 26 miles — but she does include running in her own workout regimen, and she put together a playlist for runners who might be carrying an iPod with them during Saturday’s event.

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Zac Brown Band photo courtesy of Atlantic Records.

Four-time winner Taylor Swift might have been country music’s most-honored figure at Sunday’s Grammy Awards, but she was hardly the only person in the genre to have a big time. The Zac Brown Band took the Recording Academy’s Best New Artist trophy during the three-and-a-half hour show, and Steve Wariner, Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, Carrie Underwood and Randy Travis were among the acts singled out during a streamed pre-telecast ceremony, where the bulk of the 109 victors were announced.

“It’s such a honor to be on stage and to be sharin’ in this big amalgam of music,” Zac told the star-studded Staples Center crowd. “We’re so honored and blessed to be here. We’re looking forward to playing for y’all.”

Play they did. The band whipped through a medley of songs with guest keyboard player Leon Russell, on stage less than three weeks after undergoing surgery to repair the leakage of brain fluid. The set ended with a wicked-paced instrumental after the last verse and chorus of “Chicken Fried.”

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Sugarland photo courtesy of UMG Nashville.

For the 16th straight year, the Recording Academy is celebrating its awards show with the 2010 Grammy Nominees CD, with five of the 20 tracks on the latest edition coming from country acts: Taylor Swift, the Zac Brown Band, Sugarland, Lady Antebellum and Rascal Flatts.

It marks the most country releases ever featured on the multi-genre compilation, which has previously never had more than two from Nashville’s best-selling idiom in a single year. In fact, during four of the previous 15 years, no country artists made the nominees CD at all.

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Sugarland photo by Kate Powers, courtesy of UMG Nashville.

Oct. 5, 2009 — Sugarland’s current Live On The Inside album features remakes of songs by Pearl Jam, Beyonce and Kings Of Leon, but they covered another great band during a tour in the spring.

“We went to Abbey Road [studios],” Kristian Bush told The Toledo Blade. “Jennifer [Nettles] and I sat in there and re-recorded ‘Come Together’ to mark the 40th anniversary of the [Abbey Road] album. We were doing it in the same studio on the same mikes as the Beatles. I was just like, ‘Wow.’”

The duo’s recordings of its own songs have helped Sugarland become one of the top acts in the country music business since the release of its first single, “Baby Girl,” five years ago. Sugarland sessions have yielded a bunch of hits — “Everyday America,” “All I Want To Do” and “Stay,” among them — but the moments on stage are still the ones that mean the most.

“We love playing,” Kristian said. “For us, it’s a shared art. Continue Reading

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