When Florida Georgia Line splashed into country waters in 2011 with their debut single “Cruise,” the splash was felt almost seismically across the industry. The song was a key stabbed into a cold Coors Light to shotgun just missing the air bubble in the beer – explosive and summery, it opened the door for “bro-country,” and the wave of artists trying to ride its wake.
The duo, a pair of young Tennessee dwellers who could be typecast as the “U-S-A” chanters in any American Pie remake, were onto something big. With the help of Nelly, they became crossover household names, selling 10 million copies of the song to date – the highest-selling country song ever. Then they did it again; with “Get Your Shine On,” with “Round Here,” with “Stay,” with “This Is How We Roll.” Their debut album didn’t host one ballad; each of the songs soared well past Platinum, with twangy banjos, soaring electrics, and brash percussives becoming America’s favorite sonic light beer.
It was undeniably fun, but as the duo charted hit after hit of party jams, there would eventually come a time where they needed to pivot. Artists like Kenny Chesney, who throws one of the biggest country parties on tour each summer, sings both “Flora-Bama” and “There Goes My Life;” Luke Bryan boasts both “That’s My Kind of Night” and “Drink A Beer.”
For FGL, that pivot seemed to be “Dirt.” The first look at their sophomore album Anything Goes, the duo slowed it down for their first quasi-ballad, stripping the production in the verses, featuring Brian Kelley’s usually-backing vocals in the second verse. The lyrics dug deeper, hitting on hometowns and the circle of life in an ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust manner. Critics swooned.
It was a pivot point that wasn’t fully realized. Anything Goes did have its more sober moments, but stuck to their Fireball-fueled core, replete with pickup lines. The chorus of “Angel” asks, “Did it hurt when you fell from the sky?” The album had one seismic shift, a moment that shook their image more than critics, or their listener base, may have felt: the song “Confession,” a self-aware moment of acknowledgement that maybe the Florida Georgia Line party does, occasionally, get hungover. “That guy in the windshield looking back looks just like me but there’s a crack in the reflection,” they sing. “A little lost, a little found, waiting on a call from an angel.” The duo didn’t write the song, but they singled it in late 2015 and it became another chart-topper to notch in their bedposts.
“Confession” didn’t sell particularly well compared to the duo’s other releases, but it may have greased the wheels for the rollout of Dig Your Roots, out today via Big Machine Records. The first single, “H.O.L.Y.,” was the duo’s first honest-to-God ballad, a stripped down piano offering ripped from the pages of a hymnal. The visual, directed by TK McKamy, is a different kind of grand – “This Is How We Roll” found them larger than life atop a moving 18 wheeler; “H.O.L.Y.” makes them small against the vastness of gorgeous terrain. Though some found the religious references offensive for a song that indirectly references sex – not the first time the duo has blurred those boundaries – the song sold impressively, with over a million sales to date. There’s no more “stick[ing] my pink umbrella in your drink” – now she’s “the riverbank where I was baptized.”
Unlike “Dirt,” “H.O.L.Y.” doesn’t mislead as a first look at the album. “Dig Your Roots,” the second-and-title track that begins with a Sam-Hunt-like cadence before breaking down with fluttering percussives and soaring vocals, discusses starting a family and having children. “While He’s Still Around,” the thirteenth on the 15-track album, is the most raw track the duo has recorded, an ode to spending time with a father, telling him you love him, before he’s gone. Written by the duo with Jesse and Chase Rice (with whom they penned “Cruise”), Craig Wiseman, and Jordan Schmidt, is heartfelt in structure and delivery. “I’m gonna try to say it before I gotta pray it / Hopin’ that he’s lookin’ down,” they sing. “Grow Old,” another somber moment, is a will-you-marry-me song that acknowledges the struggles as much as the joys.
“We want to put out all sorts of songs,” Kelley says in a release. “We want to be artists that can put out party songs, songs like ‘H.O.L.Y.’ or songs that make you want to call your dad like ‘While He’s Still Around.’ We want to be 360-degree artists, that’s what we’re chasing.”
“A lot of things have changed,” he says. “We’ve grown up, we’ve learned a lot. … I think that translates into this music, into this album and into this lifestyle – it’s all one.”
“It’s been fun for us to try to better ourselves every day,” Hubbard adds. “Whether that’s spiritually, musically, mentally or creatively, that’s really been our goal for the last couple years, and I think our music is doing that as well. … It was fun being boys, but we’re trying to be the men we want to be now.”
Though Dig Your Roots feels a shade older, fans from the first “baby you a song” won’t be disappointed – party anthems abound, from the island-infused “Life Is A Honeymoon,” which features Ziggy Marley, to “Summerland,” a slowed-down iteration of their early songs that flirts “I know you ain’t a model / but you should be a model.” “Smooth,” which leads the album, would have felt at home on either of their earlier projects.
One of the standouts on the album is “May We All,” the duo’s current single featuring Tim McGraw. The song, which fits heavily into the signature FGL groove, name-checks Travis Tritt and Tupac (not the first time for the duo, who shout out Hank and Drake on “This Is How We Roll,” or for McGraw, who calls on Conway and T-Pain in “Truck Yeah.”) The lyric is a snug fit for both acts: for McGraw, fresh off “Humble and Kind,” it’s a similar learn-and-grow, while FGL continue to celebrate life’s little pleasures. “May we all do a little bit better than the first time / Learn a little somethin’ from the worst times / Get a little stronger from the hurt time / May we all get to have a chance to ride the fast one / Walk away wiser when we crashed one / Keep hopin’ that the best one is the last one,” they sing. “Yeah, you learn to fly, and if you can’t then you just free fall / May we all.”
For the most part though, Dig Your Roots suggests we’ll see the duo doing less bouncing on stage – the banjos are less plucky, and the melodies are more drawn out, for a more R&B-leaning sound that croons a shade sultrier. “Island,” for instance, might raise expectations as a sister song to the Marley collab, but instead it’s a late night lay-you-down that takes cues from Sam Hunt’s Montevallo or Chase Rice’s recent (though quickly abandoned) “Whisper.” “Lifer” and to a lesser degree “Good Girl, Bad Boy” are similarly smoother, both vocally and in production; “God, Your Mama, and Me,” which features The Backstreet Boys, is a lighters-to-the-sky song. Even on “Music Is Healing,” an ode to the power of music that doesn’t quite manage to pull off the depth it seems to be seeking, their commitment to a slightly silkier sound shows.
Dig Your Roots isn’t a wild departure for the duo: like much of their career, it’s been in subtle degrees, like Kelley’s increasingly grown-out hair. Part of the duo’s success has been due to those quiet changes in course, inviting an audience just a little bit older to grow a little bit older with them. The album is the product of artists who don’t just shoot Fireball, they own a peach pecan whiskey brand, Old Camp. Though Dig Your Roots is far from the strongest album of the year, it achieves what the duo set out to accomplish: retain their Platinum-earning sound while tweaking the mix just a little.
Grab the album on iTunes.