Maddie & Tae first broke out in 2013 with their“Girl In A Country Song,” and the full-length that followed made good on the single’s glinting promise. Released in 2015, the Start Here cast a side-eyed glance at the high school cafeteria crowd—then just teens, it was a world they still knew well—and burned with the desire to break out, move out, and set the world on fire.
They enter a new realm on their boldly honest sophomore album, a striking record chock-full of stories of love, loss and redemption that sees a relationship through all phases from flirty beginnings into all-consuming love and tumbling into woeful heartache. Stand-out moments of strength include “One Heart to Another” and the swaggering kiss-off “New Dog, Old Tricks,” a winking, hip hop-inflected anthem that marks the first outside cut Maddie & Tae has recorded.
Following the release of Start Here, Maddie & Tae found themselves without a record label. Their own, Dot Records, which operated beneath the BMLG umbrella, had shuttered. “We were confused about what our purpose was and what our future held,” recalls Maddie. “We felt on top of the world and it all came crashing down.”
They’ve since found a home at Universal Music Group on Mercury Nashville, and each say the experience pushed them creatively, ultimately making them better songwriters and, as the album’s first part reveals, building their confidence to new heights.