Luke Laird, Lori McKenna, Barry Dean - The Songwriter Tapes, Vol. 2 (2023)

Luke Laird, Lori McKenna, And Barry Dean have announced that the next volume of The Songwriter Tapes, Vol. 2, will be released on March 17th via CN Records and they have shared a track "Girl Crush" from the project.

Here is the official announcement: A simple idea that started as a group text thread between songwriters Luke Laird, Lori McKenna, and Barry Dean has recently blossomed into an all-new collection of their works, together and apart. On March 17th, the second of three volumes of Laird, McKenna, and Dean's The Songwriter Tapes will be released by CN Records. Each volume includes brand new recordings of three songs that even part-time country music fans will be familiar with, if not already fans of, and one tune that has yet to see the light of day. Choosing the four songs for each of the songwriters to sing was a collaborative process. And while it may have been difficult to narrow it down to 12 tracks after more than 65 collective years in country music, the result is a timeless anthology of career-defining songs from as far back as 2004 and as recent as 2020.

Today, the trio premiered The Songwriter Tapes' version of McKenna's chart-topping Liz Rose and Hillary Lindsey co-write, "Girl Crush." "One morning in Nashville, Tennessee I told Liz and Hillary that I wanted to write a song called 'girl crush' and Hillary Lindsey sang the first four lines of this song exactly as they are," remembers McKenna, still astonished. " She just picked up a guitar, moved her fingers around a bit, and sang them. Like she already knew the song! She looked up at us and said, 'like that?' Yes, like that, that's a gift." Of course, the song flew to immense heights in the hands of Little Big Town. McKenna still sings "Girl Crush" with her band-and audience-every night, in her words, "Knowing that I can't reach Little Big Town's iconic version.