Maddie & Tae’s long-awaited sophomore The Way It Feels album is out now. The record, which marks the duo’s first full-length project on Mercury Nashville, was going to be named One Heart to Another –- the same as their EP that was released one year ago, until Maddie Marlow had an entirely different idea, one that thankfully worked.
‘We were dead set on ‘One Heart to Another’ for the album title ‘cause we felt like it matched the picture, all this,” Maddie told their record label. “And then I listened to ‘Bathroom Floor’ and I heard it one night. I think I was driving home from a friend’s house; it was like 10:30 at night and I’m driving home, and I hear ‘Bathroom Floor.’ I’m like ‘Oh my gosh, it’s so exciting!’ like hearing your song on the radio.
“It was one of the first times I’d heard it on the radio,” she added. “I’m driving home and the line ‘I bet you’re gonna love the way it feels’ –– that line hit me differently in the car. And I was like ‘the way it feels’ that’s interesting. And so that phrase just stayed in my head for like a solid month.”
Maddie didn’t tell her singing partner, Taylor Dye, that she was pondering a different title for the record, at least not until the literal last minute.
“I just kind of kept simmering over it over Christmas break, and I even asked family members and everyone was like ‘No, I think it’s One Heart to Another,'” Maddie recalled. “And then the last minute, we’re like, ‘We have to name the album,’ I had one of our creative directors over here at UMG, Karen Naff, I was like, ‘Hey I need you to change One Heart To Another, cause we already had the album title ready to go with the picture, the colors and everything.
“I was like I just need you to change the text to The Way It Feels just for fun,” she continued. “I don’t think anyone’s gonna like it, but just to see it. And so when she like sly-dog sent me the image I texted it to Tae and our head of A&R Stephanie Wright, who had a huge part in putting this whole record together with us, and everyone was like, ‘Yup! I think that’s the album title.’”
Maddie & Tae will hit the road later this year with Lady Antebellum, on the trio’s Oceans 2020 Tour. The tour, which was postponed due to COVID-19, is scheduled to kick off on June 12. Find tour dates, and purchase The Way It Feels, at MaddieandTae.com.