CMAMaddie & Tae shot to stardom with their #1 anthem, “Girl in a Country Song,” an aggressively-produced critique of women’s second-class place in the country format. Now that they’ve got your attention, the duo is introducing their harmony-driven, acoustic sound on the follow-up hit, “Fly.” In fact, the second single offers a better indication of what you can expect from the rest of Maddie & Tae’s debut album, Start Here.
The duo’s Maddie Marlow tells ABC Radio, “From that first song to the last one, you have no mistake which genre this belongs to. It is country, because that’s the music that inspired us to make music. All the ’90s country artists — Dixie Chicks, Lee Ann Womack, The Judds, Vince Gill.”
Like their country heroes, Maddie & Tae weren’t afraid to pile on the steel guitars, fiddles and mandolins on the album, either.
“They had steel guitar and fiddle over everything,” Maddie continues. “Those kind of instruments just really, to us, help us bring our lyrics to life. Those instruments just really help evoke that emotion.”
Maddie & Tae’s latest hit, “Fly,” just happens to share a title with the Dixie Chicks‘ landmark 1999 album, Fly, which was a huge influence on the young duo. It would go on to win Country Album of the Year at the Grammys and Album of the Year at the CMA Awards.
Maddie adds, “I think I own two copies of that Fly record, because I think I broke the first one ’cause I had listened to it so much.”
The connection between “Fly” and the Chicks’ album of the same name didn’t dawn on Maddie until they got ready to release the track as a single. That happy coincidence made her even more determined to make Maddie & Tae’s “Fly” a #1 hit.
“We’re like, we’ve got to do this song justice,” Maddie says with a laugh. “Especially this one, because it’s almost like our little Dixie Chicks tribute a little bit.”
Maddie & Tae’s debut album, Start Here, comes out August 28.
Copyright © 2015, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
