Of course, the ACM Awards are on Sunday night (April 15). But do you know what else that date is all about? Lady Antebellum and the 10th anniversary of the release of their self-titled debut album.
From their first single “Love Don’t Live Here” to their latest one “Heart Break,” Dave Haywood, Charles Kelley and Hillary Scott have been part of the modern country music culture, and have maintained their bond as a trio even after Kelley and Scott pursued their solo side hustles in 2015.
But before we think about the past decade we’ve all spent getting to know the band, let’s talk about those days before they were a band. Like the time Haywood and Kelley drove 16 hours round trip to make $200.
“Before Charles and I even met Hillary, I had found this website for Joe’s (Bar). So I emailed them at the booking email address. They wrote us back and let me and Charles come up and open up for Emerson Drive. We just played under Charles Kelley’s name. We got 200 bucks to drive up from Nashville. That covered about 100 miles of gas,” Haywood told me about halfway into their decade of hits.
“I always feel like being in a group, there’s just this natural grounding effect where none of us would let each other get like that. I’ll never let Charles and Hillary be divas or feel, like, too cool,” he said. “We don’t want to be those kinds of people.”
And that grounding effect has paid off with hit after hit after hit. It’s a list so long, you may have even forgotten how much you’ve loved some of their old stuff. We narrowed their stack of tunes down to our ten favorites below.
An all-new CMT Hot 20 Countdown will highlight the milestones in Lady Antebellum’s career on Saturday and Sunday (April 14-15) at 9 a.m. ET.
“Love Don’t Live Here”