After six studio albums and one Christmas album with Capitol Records Nashville, Lady Antebellum signed a new record contract with Big Machine Label Group, which is home to Taylor Swift, Florida Georgia Line, Thomas Rhett, Reba McEntire, Sugarland, Midland and more.

Under Capitol’s guidance, Lady A scored nine No. 1 singles and five No. 1 albums, while earning seven Grammy Awards, six CMA Awards and seven ACM Awards.

As Lady Antebellum’s Charles Kelley told Joshua “Bru” Brubaker of Nash FM 931 in Detroit, one of the reasons the trio made the label switch was the “new, excited energy from Big Machine.”

“I think we did six or seven records with [Capitol], so you know it was just time for our contract to be up,” said Charles. “We just felt some really new, excited energy from Big Machine. They had heard some of the songs we’d been writing and [we] just really felt like they had a fresh energy that would be fun. They’ve got some new ideas of where they think they can take this thing. So we felt just kinda re-inspired to work with them.”

With the new record deal, Charles says the trio is also looking to take their music in a new direction.

“Yeah, I mean we’re definitely wanting to be a little bit more honest with our music and our lyrics and probably show a different side again, just musically,” says Charles. “It will probably sound a lot different than ‘You Look Good’ and ‘Bartender’ and a lot of that too—we’re probably gonna dig a little deeper on this project this time. I’m just excited for everybody to hear. We’ve been writing a ton. We’ve been going through a lot as a group and even in our personal lives, just growing in our families and growing as a band and we’re ready to kinda really throw it all out on a record.”