“Sober”
Little Big Town
Written by Hillary Lindsey, Lori McKenna, and Liz Rose
2013
When Little Big Town perform live, both Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Schlapman have a tendency to raise their non-microphone hand in the air like they’ve been moved by the Holy Spirit in the middle of Sunday service. As an “ex-vangelical,” it’s something that I’ve always viewed as an affectation and, for as much as I will go to bat for Little Big Town, have found disingenuous.
That is, except when they’re performing “Sober.”
Country music is often at its best when it’s intertwined with gospel, and The Love Junkies wrote “Sober” in such a way that it captures love as an experience of spiritual awakening. Little Big Town understood that and, with ‘Berly taking a rare lead vocal, deliver the song as a testimony of how being in love has saved their very souls.
Over the last twenty years, there’s perhaps no simile Music Row has beaten to death quite like love as an addiction. “Sober” is one of the few songs to tap that vein in a way that plays as more than just a shallow exercise in recreational escapism. It isn’t about being addicted to a person, but it’s about being changed by a profound, daresay spiritual, connection.
There is such joy in the way Schlapman sings the opening line of the song’s chorus, “I love being in love,” with her three bandmates enveloping her in some of the finest harmony work of their career. The sound and sentiment are intoxicating– as they should be– and it makes perfect sense that she’d be so swept up that she finally declares, “Oh, when I die, I don’t want to go sober.”
It’s a beautiful thought that captures the empathy that we’ve so often written here is at the center of the finest country music. When faced with the loneliness and finailty of death, who wouldn’t hope to be surrounded by love when their time comes?
Additional Listening:
Three other Little Big Town singles that got at least a look at inclusion in this feature
- “Little White Church,” and I can’t improve upon what I wrote about that one fourteen years ago.
- “Boondocks,” which you are very sure peaked higher at radio than #9.
- “Girl Crush,” not really as controversial as some would’ve liked for it to be, and another Love Junkies winner.
- And a fantastic a capella cover of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” from their Scattered, Smothered, and Covered series.
And this is a country song
- Tool’s “Sober,” which is obviously not a cover but is absolutely a country song.
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I love LBT–saw them not only open for Martina but at the Grand Ole Opry as well–and they’re amazing live. They certainly have a plethora of strong offerings to choose from, though I’ll admit to a certain partiality toward the title track from Tornado as well as the Road to Here tracks A Little More You and Bones.
“Tornado” is hands-down my favorite Little Big Town song.
I saw them alongside Chris Stapleton and George Strait in Jacksonville this year, and I was really impressed. I had always liked their music enough, but that made me a fan of theirs.
…funny you mention “the road to here”, chris s.
back in september i met little big town backstage at the “country night gstaad” 2024 (switzerland). i couldn’t make it to the offical press event the night before, so i didn’t expect much access on the day – rules are rules usually.
however, when they and their little entourage arrived at the lounge area backstage everything and everybody seemed very relaxed. hence, i gave it a shot and just walked up to jimmy westbrook, introduced myself with the cover story i had written on them ahead of their swiss gigs (two) in my hand and a seconds later we were deeply in conversation and fact/assumptions checking.
i told him that only while i was doing the homework for the cover story it came to me how good their sophomore album was. i also mentioned that i very much enjoyed their “mr. sun” album – “album of the year contender quality” – even though i had found the release date (autumn) totally off at the time. particularly his song “rich man” was a standout, i felt. i mentioned that i had the a strong feeling (when writing that cover story) that everything could have gone really pear-shaped for them, hadn’t they found success with “boondocks” – which in fact saved their career. there is some footage, where he seems to swallow quite hard in an interview (country music hall of fame event) when that make or break period for them became a topic. he openly confirmed that this was much tougher a time for the band than anyone would perhaps imagine just from the outside.
since the ladies were deeply in conversation with the three ladies of chapel heart there, he introduced me to philip sweet, whom i had a rather long and frank exchange on their albums starting with “the breaker” during which i had to congratulate him on his lead vocals in “friends of mine”.
then came the big moment, kimberly schlapman was suddenly free for a moment and i walked – or rather beelined – straight up to her, introduced myself and told her that her “sober” performance captured at red rock is one of my favorite clips of all with her (and the song) putting those big smiles onto the faces of the crowd singing along, adding as casually as possible that in my book she had always been one of the most beautiful creatures in the whole universe, but that i so far hadn’t found a good spot in any of my write-ups on lbt to slip that in without coming across as awkwardly as it may sound. of course, she found that i exaggerated big time, with me insisting: “if so, only very marginally.”. we left it at that with big smiles.
karen fairchild and i had a good laugh a few minutes later, when i told her that in the video footage after their very first opry appearance way back when, her chewing that gum real good had been absolutely hillarious in seriously tomboy fashion. and that her performance in the “girl crush” video is right up there with jennifer nettles’ “stay” and the chicks’ “not ready to make nice”. pure art.
i remember, years and years ago a female commenter here was mentioning how nice the two ladies of lbt were, when she had met them at a meet & greet occasion (?). she was absolutely right and so are the men. great people – or “very, very beautiful people, very beautiful” as a famous senior citizen of mar-a-lago, fl. most likely would put it. actually, chapel hart are very, very beautiful people, very beautiful too and so was tyler booth, the 3rd headliner of the night.