Maddie & Tae’s ‘Tourist in This Town’ Confronts the Pain of Their Past [Listen]
Maddie & Tae's "Tourist in This Town" is what happens after a breakup, the duo's Maddie Marlow and Tae Dye explain, "when you kind of feel lost in the city that you’ve known either for your whole life or most of your life."
"You basically you have to relearn every street, because you can't go down that one because that's where he used to live, or you can't go to that coffee shop because that’s the one that he goes to," Dye tells Taste of Country backstage at a recent show in Chicago. "You just feel like a stranger in your home, and it's scary — we felt that a lot."
More of Country Music's Most Painful Breakup Songs
It's honest, too — Maddie & Tae were smack dab in the middle of a number of personal and professional challenges when they were writing "Tourist in This Town" with Jimmy Robbins and Barry Dean. Dye went through a breakup from fellow country artist Jackie Lee a few years ago, and the duo also split from their record label. They're now signed to UMG Nashville.
"Ironically Maddie and I were going through the label drama and I was going through an actual breakup," Dye says, "So we were very much in that space when we were writing this song. Neither of us could write these sorts of those songs without feeling that pain."
"We actually thought of taking out the lyric, 'a broken heart for a souvenir,' but I fought for it," Marlow adds. "That line was just so badass. You can feel that line and those words. Tae is one of those writers where she will be really quiet and then she will just have this money line that shapes the whole song."
Besides the excitement over the release of "Tourist in This Town," Maddie & Tae are riding high on the success of new songs "Friends Don’t" and "Die from a Broken Heart."
The ACM nominees for Duo of the Year will release a new album later this year.
29 Songs From Women in Country That Demand Attention:
Lindsay Ell Is a One-Woman RockStar With This "Criminal" Performance