Brothers Osborne stopped by The Bobby Bones Show to talk about their new album, why they feel their new music is the most authentic they’ve ever made, perform a new song and more!
Brothers Osborne new self-titled album came out this past Friday (Sept. 15), and for T.J. and John Osborne, it’s their truest version of themselves. Since they released their last album, Skeletons, they both have shared a lot about their personal lives. With their past work, they felt like there was 20% they never talked about, but their new album feels like 100% them and truly authentic, so it was only fitting to self-title it. Since they feel like they are in a place where they can be 100% themselves, they were never happier creating an album.
The opening track on the album, “Who Says You Can’t Have Everything,” they wrote with their friend Casey Bethard. John had the title and said the best song ideas come when you’re just doing normal everyday things and they randomly pop in your head. He reached out to Bethard with the idea and went to his studio to start writing it. He said the song is about the things you’ve been conditioned to think are the most important in life truly aren’t. When your career is being an artist, you think you have to be someone else for people to accept you, but if you’re lucky enough, you get to have success being yourself. And you think once you achieve this certain thing, you’ll be happy and it will fix everything, but when you get there, you realize it fixed nothing and you neglected your mental health and other important parts of your life. To summarize what the song meant, they used the Jim Carrey quote, “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.” They found the perspective you have after you get everything you want can be so profound. Another song they love on the album is “We Ain’t Good At Breaking Up,” which they did with Miranda Lambert. It’s one of their favorites because they had never done anything like it before.
They recalled one of their previous singles, “I Don’t Remember Me (Before You).” They had high hopes for it, and it didn’t do well, so they stopped playing it during their live shows. They recently brought it back and have gotten great reactions from it. T.J. shared that his favorite song of all time is “What A Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong because it always makes him so happy, and he gets emotional about it. John shared his favorite song is “Night Moves” by Bob Seger because as a songwriter he loves the story that song paints. T.J.’s boyfriend is from Mexico, so he did not grow up knowing a lot of American music. One of his favorite things is whenever they are listening to songs around the house and an artist like Patsy Cline comes on, he’ll ask who it is, and he’ll spend the rest of the day showing him her discovery.
In October, they are playing four big shows to promote the album, you can get tickets at BrothersOsborne.com.
While in studio, they performed “Who Says You Can’t Have Everything,” you can watch the performance below!