Eric Church previewed his new album, The Outsiders, for members of the media Wednesday night in an East Nashville studio, where he also addressed that teaser video he posted featuring Taylor Swift's speech from this year's CMA Awards. While some interpreted the video, including Taylor's speech about getting a spot on the Rascal Flatts tour because Eric got fired, as a diss to Taylor, Eric insists he meant no disrespect to Taylor. Even though Taylor's camp signed off on the clip, Eric admits he didn't like the tone of the video once he saw it.
The clip, titled "One Will Rise and One Will Fall," has been taken down from YouTube and replaced withanother video with the handwritten message, "Mysteries may seem strange, but that's what makes them fun. Eric adores Taylor for who she is and what she has done. You're headed down the wrong trail so we must stop this. One will rise and one will fall has nothing to do with Swift."
The message goes on to say that all will be revealed on January 3.
On the music front, Eric's new album, The Outsiders, features 11 new tracks, including the lead title cut. He created each song to be a journey unto itself, and the whole thing was recorded at a church in East Nashville that his producer converted into a studio. Eric says that new creative space helped him move on to a new sound following his breakthrough album, Chief.
Eric played a lot of electric guitar and piano on The Outsiders, too. After watching a Fiona Apple concert on TV, Eric was inspired by the way she used a lot of booming low notes on the piano, so you'll hear plenty of that sound on the album.
Eric also sings pretty explicitly about sex on "Like a Wrecking Ball" and gets dark on a three-song trilogy beginning with the "Dark Side" and ending with "Devil Devil." A spoken-word performance of Shel Silverstein's The Devil and Billy Markham was intended to be the bridge between those two tracks, but they couldn’t get permission from the copyright holder to include it. Eric ended up staying up for two days straight to write another spoken word track dealing with the struggle to be heard in Nashville. It's so new, Eric doesn't even have a name for it.
The Outsiders will be in stores February 11, 2014.
