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Behind The Song: Little Big Town- "Better Man"

By Radio.com Staff

Behind the Song gives fans an inside look into some of the best songs by this year's ACM Awards nominees. Here, Little Big Town -- nominated for Vocal Group of the Year -- talk about 'Better Man.'

There was a lot of pressure on Little Big Town to follow up their massive 2014 smash, "Girl Crush," and they came through last year with a little help from a famous friend. "Better Man" was given to them by none other than Taylor Swift.

Phillip Sweet tells Radio.com, “We’ve known Taylor for a long time, and she actually sent [the song in] an email to me, and I passed it to the rest of the band. And she was just like, ‘I’ve thought about you guys singing this melody… let me know what you think.’ And we were in the middle of making a record, so this summer while we were out on tour, we just kept listening to it and living with it, and fell in love with it.”

"She's always been a songwriter," Sweet notes, pointing out that the country singer-turned-pop star always writes or co-writes her songs. But, he says, "I don't think she's ever pitched songs to other writers, ever."

While Swift wasn’t involved in the recording of the song, the band played it for her after they cut it. Kimberly Schlapman says, “We really were anxious for her to hear it. Plus, she handed us this jewel, and we really wanted to know what she thought about it. And she loved it. She genuinely got so excited, it was so much fun to watch her. We were all like, ‘Oh, she likes it!’ And she really, really did.”

Watch the ACM Awards on CBS on Sunday April 2 at 8 pm ET/7 CT.

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