Little Big Town, Ashley Monroe – Sucker For A Sad Song

Three of country’s finest women wrote it on Shelby Lynne’s porch last summer — and now Little Big Town and Ashley Monroe have turned that back-porch song into the opening statement of their first new album in four years.

Some songs are built in gleaming studios; this one started on a porch. Sucker For A Sad Song — the new single from Little Big Town featuring Ashley Monroe — was written last summer on the porch of the great singer-songwriter Shelby Lynne, three friends passing a melody back and forth in the warm evening air. That easy, unhurried origin is all over the finished record: a slow-burning, soulful country song about the irresistible pull of melancholy, and the first taste of the band’s first album of original music in four years.

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The collaboration is a first. In more than 25 years together, Little Big Town — Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Phillip Sweet, and Jimi Westbrook — had never made a record with Ashley Monroe, the acclaimed singer-songwriter and Pistol Annies member whose voice carries the same ache and warmth as their own. The two camps had long moved in the same Nashville orbit, which is why the pairing feels, as one writer put it, both natural and long overdue. Fairchild, Monroe, and Lynne share the writing credit, and Monroe’s harmony threads through the band’s famous four-part blend, adding what she cheerfully called “some light harms” to the mix. “I love making music with my friends,” she said of the session.

Slow-burning swagger

Musically, Sucker For A Sad Song leans into an easygoing, late-night groove — a simmering swagger built on clever wordplay and understated cool rather than any big country-radio push. Co-produced by Fairchild and the two-time Grammy winner Gena Johnson, whose credits include Jason Isbell, Dolly Parton, and Brandi Carlile, the track is played by a crack band: JT Cure on bass, Audley Freed and Tim Galloway on guitars, Billy Justineau on Hammond B3 and Wurlitzer, and Chad Gamble on drums. The result is warm, human, and a little worn-in — exactly the aesthetic the band was chasing. “Pour out the pink champagne and listen now,” Little Big Town said in announcing it.

The accompanying music video keeps that intimate spirit, and does it with a twist: it was directed by Becky Fluke and shot entirely on an iPhone. In an era of glossy, big-budget clips, the choice fits a song and an album committed to imperfection and lived-in feeling. The video mirrors the track’s understated mood, letting the effortless interplay between Little Big Town and Monroe carry the frame.

A statement of purpose

Sucker For A Sad Song opens It’s A Dying Art, Little Big Town’s twelfth studio album, arriving August 28, 2026, on MCA — their first collection of original material since 2022’s Mr. Sun. The title is a mission statement. “This album was made in the middle of real life — grief, hope, and everything love costs and gives us,” the band said. “It’s a reminder to hold on. We can’t let love be a dying art.” The record leans hard into organic, human-made music, and stacks the guest list with kindred spirits: alongside Monroe, there are collaborations with Jason Isbell on The Door and Kelsea Ballerini on Closing Time.

For a group with a quarter-century of hits behind them — Girl Crush, Better Man, Pontoon — the move here is inward rather than upward, toward storytelling and feeling over chart mechanics. Sucker For A Sad Song sets exactly that tone: unhurried, beautifully sung, and unafraid of the blues. It’s the sound of seasoned artists making the music they want to make, with friends they’ve admired for years, and inviting the rest of us to pull up a chair on the porch.