Set To Perform On Good Morning America Monday (7/13)
“[Sunday Drive is] bounding anthems and expansive ballads not meant for indoor listening.”
– People
Sunday Drive, the highly-anticipated fifth studio album from one of country music’s most powerful vocalists, Brett Eldredge, is available everywhere today (listen here). With GRAMMY-award-winning producers Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk, Eldredge began the creative process by embarking on a transformative journey within himself and across the country. It eventually led them to his hometown of Paris, IL, before finally arriving in Chicago to record the album that had been years in the making and bring it to life. Credited as a notable release of the week by NPR, the album landed on The Tennessean’s “Nashville’s Best Music of 2020, So Far” list, described as “a creative rebirth for one of modern country’s most soulful vocalists.”
“You have to give yourself permission to do anything in life, to be brave a little bit,” Eldredge explained. “I got to a certain point where I felt like I wasn’t giving enough of myself and it took a lot of self-awareness to finally realize that if I do have more in me, then I’ve got to step up and take that step off the edge. I had to let go of worrying about where my music is going to hit on the chart and worry more about where it’s going to hit in your heart.”
“I knew I had to do things differently this time,” he added. “So I threw caution to the wind and got away from all that I was comfortable with in order to go deeper. I didn’t even listen to the radio for a year because I didn’t want to know what music somebody else was making. Not because I don’t care, but because I had to figure out what I needed to say for myself. By making sure I wasn’t being influenced by anything other than what my heart was saying, I was able to write what I wanted to, which was important. Recording this album ended up being the most powerful thing I’ve ever been a part of. I was free to be purely me as an artist and as a person. Stepping away from the world gave me a superpower: the vulnerability I needed to tell my story.”
“I had this vision of recording in a setting that felt intimate and personal, which ended up being this little studio in Chicago where we were all basically sitting on top of each other. I was singing live right there in the room with them and sometimes you could hear vocal bleed-in from the instruments. But it didn’t event matter. It sounds more real, like you’re hearing a band live. I couldn’t imagine having created this album with anyone other than Ian and Daniel, who are both incredible and so musically inclined. I’ve always wanted to have more space for my voice, not only vocally but also lyrically, and they provided a way for me to do that with this beautiful music. Collaborating with them helped take this album to wonderfully different places, introducing me to a unique sound that is unlike any of my other records.”
“Sunday Drive allows me to be the artist that I think I was born to be. I’m finally here.”
On July 13, Eldredge is also set to make a virtual visit to Good Morning America in the 8:00 AM hour, performing “Good Day.” The feel-good track was preceded in release by the album’s first single, “Gabrielle” – a song that Rolling Stone declared “a breath of fresh air.” This week, as the song continues to hit airwaves around the nation, Eldredge premiered the song’s official music video (watch here). Directed by Reid Long, the video was filmed in and around the high school he attended growing up in Paris, IL. The acclaimed vocalist performed a stripped-down version of “Gabrielle” on Late Night with Stephen Colbert earlier this year (watch here).