Thomas Rhett is enjoying a Top 5 hit with “Angels,” from his 2022 Where We Started album. The song, written by Rhett, along with Julian Bunetta, Teddy Swims and Josh Thompson, was inspired by Rhett thinking about his wife, Lauren Akins.
“Anyone married to someone in the spotlight, it takes a very special human being,” Rhett tells Billboard. “The amount of days I’ve been gone, the amount of times I’ve let work overtake my family life, the amount of times I’ve said yes to stuff that I probably should have said no to — and [she was] there with me the whole way.”
Rhett and Akins met in elementary school, and got married in 2012, a year before his freshman It Goes Like This album was released. It’s Akins who has been his constant companion, through every high and low he has experienced, both personally and professionally, since then.
“Lauren’s been through the wringer with me in the van days, the bus days, and now today’s days, and she’s always taken my life as a champ,” Rhett tells Southern Living. “I say this a lot before I play the song live, but I look at Lauren sometimes and I do truly wonder every now and then if her body is completely just taken over by an angel, because it takes a lot of patience to be married to somebody like me.”
Rhett wanted to make sure every part of “Angels” was perfect, including his vocal, which was a challenge considering how high parts of the song are for him to sing. To compensate, the father of four recorded parts of the song in his home studio, using 60 to 70 takes to make sure it wounded the way he wanted it to sound.
“I really just wanted to lock myself in that emotion alone and see what would come out,” Rhett recalls. “The intricacies of my voice breaking up or the falsetto not being perfect — that’s the realness of it.”
Photo Credit: Robbie Caponetto for Southern Living
Rhett might have written “Angels” about his wife, but he is already seeing how much the song fits other people’s love stories as well.
“I wrote it from a personal perspective, but I think it will resonate with a lot of people,” Rhett says. “It’s about how none of us are perfect, and how lucky we are to have those people in our lives who show up and love us despite our flaws. I often look at my wife and think she’s truly an angel, for the love and grace she shows me every single day.”
Rhett’s Home Team Tour will conclude with two back-to-back shows at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena. Find music and tour dates at ThomasRhett.com.
Read ‘Thomas Rhett: 11 Things To Know About the Superstar’ here.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of The GreenRoom / Caleb Cockrell