Eric Church to Release Triple Album, “Heart & Soul”
Always looking to shake things up and steal the attention of the music listening public, Eric Church’s next release will be three records instead of one, titled Heart & Soul. Heart will be made available on April 16th, Soul will be released on April 23rd, and ‘&’ will only be available as a vinyl record to members of his fan club on Tuesday, April 20th.
“I have three albums coming out in April,” Eric Church said in an address to his fan club called The Church Choir. “They came out of my 28 days in the mountains of North Carolina, where the songs were recorded and written. The collection is entitled Heart-&-Soul … the middle record ‘&’ was made for and only available to you. It’s been a long 10 months. With the power of music, and a love for each other, we will get through this. We will gather again soon.”
Along with Church co-writing all but two of the songs, the songwriters to be featured on the three records represent a close knit group of cohorts, likely due to the isolated nature of the writing and recording sessions. Casey Beathard, Jeff Hyde, and Jeffrey Steele walk away with numerous co-writes, while there are no guests spots like on some other Eric Church records, at least from what we can glean from the track list (see below).
Even though it’s three records, it’s only 24 tracks, with the two main acts coming in with 9 songs, and the middle exclusive fan club portion with 6 songs. Even though the one record is only being made available physically to his club members (a play to drive subscriber numbers, for sure), two of the songs—“Through My Ray-Bans” and “Doing Life with Me”—have already been released as digital singles. That is two of the six pre-release singles so far, including radio singles, “Stick That In Your Country Song,” and the current single “Hell of a View.”
Though not nearly the 30-track juggernaut just released by Morgan Wallen called Dangerous, this triple threat by Church is likely a harbinger of things to come as artists extend the size of projects and release deluxe editions to increase streams and chart placement with mammoth releases meant to bust through to busy ears.
No word as of yet on a specific direction or theme of the album(s), but the rhetoric around them and the early singles seems to hint Church may try to keep it a bit more positive than some previous releases. According to Church, he would write songs in the morning, and then record them later that night. Once again the set is produced by Jay Joyce, and features Eric Church’s touring band, including vocalist Joanna Cotten.
Pre-orders start Friday, January 29th.
Heart Track List
1. Heart On Fire (Eric Church)
2. Heart Of The Night (Eric Church, Jeremy Spillman, Jeff Hyde, Ryan Tyndell, Travis Hill)
3. Russian Roulette (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell)
4. People Break (Eric Church, Luke Laird)
5. Stick That In Your Country Song (Davis Naish, Jeffrey Steele)
6. Never Break Heart (Eric Church, Luke Dick)
7. Crazyland (Eric Church, Luke Laird, Michael Heeney)
8. Bunch Of Nothing (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde)
9. Love Shine Down (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeffrey Steele)
& Track List
1. Through My Ray-Bans (Eric Church, Luke Laird, Barry Dean)
2. Doing Life With Me (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeffrey Steele)
3. Do Side (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
4. Kiss Her Goodbye (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
5. Mad Man (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
6. Lone Wolf (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Ryan Tyndell)
Soul Track List
1. Rock & Roll Found Me (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Driver Williams)
2. Look Good And You Know It (Eric Church, Jonathan Singleton, Travis Meadows)
3. Bright Side Girl (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Scotty Emerick, Clint Daniels)
4. Break It Kind Of Guy (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Luke Dick)
5. Hell Of A View (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell)
6. Where I Wanna Be (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeremy Spillman, Ryan Tyndell)
7. Jenny (Eric Church)
8. Bad Mother Trucker (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Luke Dick, Jeremy Spillman)
9. Lynyrd Skynyrd Jones (Casey Beathard)
January 21, 2021 @ 7:09 pm
More doesn’t always mean better but these days everybody wants to have a double album it seems. Even the best double albums have filler like the White album and Physical Graffiti.
January 22, 2021 @ 8:54 am
Seriously. Seems strange that at a time when attention spans are so short, artists would lengthen their material. When you do a triple album people naturally think of other triple albums which exposes you to unfavorable comparisons.
For example, when I think of great triple albums I think of All Things Must Pass by Harrison and Sandanistas by the Clash. And Harrison relied on “Apple Jam” for two sides and two versions of Isn’t It A Pity.
Now Vince Gill did a quadruple back in 2006 and it was really good. There are a bunch of tracks I still often listen to.
January 22, 2021 @ 9:26 am
What could you possibly consider filler on Physical Grafitti?
January 22, 2021 @ 9:33 am
The only thing I can come up with is Boogie With Stu, which I didn’t realize until much, much later was basically Ooh My Soul by Richie Valens (saw Los Lobos cover it). Still, it’s fun.
January 23, 2021 @ 7:21 pm
Yep guess Ill just have to listen
January 21, 2021 @ 7:19 pm
“They came out of my 28 days in the mountains of North Carolina, where the songs were recorded and written. The collection is entitled Heart-&-Soul … the middle record ‘&’ was made for and only available to you. It’s been a long 10 months. With the power of music, and a love for each other, we will get through this. We will gather again soon.”
We came together as a team. Everyone gave more than 110%. We worked so hard to be where we are at right now. We love our fans. It’s been a long road to get here. If we go all out, leave it all on the floor, I’m confident we’ll prevail. We came to play.
January 21, 2021 @ 7:21 pm
Wow those are some ugly album covers
January 22, 2021 @ 5:39 am
I thought they might be placeholders waiting for the real thing.
But then I thought that about the Luke Combs album.
January 22, 2021 @ 10:04 am
THANK YOU!
I love Eric Church and I expect to love these albums, but those covers are horrendous….
January 23, 2021 @ 7:34 am
So that’s what his eyes look like…
January 21, 2021 @ 7:52 pm
&, by the artist formerly known as Eric Church.
January 21, 2021 @ 7:52 pm
A wild guess but I’ll say
1 disc will be country
2nd will be rock
3rd some r&b stuff
January 21, 2021 @ 8:30 pm
“They came out of my 28 days in the mountains of North Carolina.” Also inspired by: T’Pau?
January 21, 2021 @ 8:37 pm
It would only be logical.
January 21, 2021 @ 9:34 pm
Unless “Kiss her goodbye” is released in the next 30 mins, so far only 2 songs have been released from each project
January 21, 2021 @ 10:01 pm
That’s my mistake. For some reason I thought “Kiss Her Goodbye” had already been released.
January 22, 2021 @ 6:53 am
He hasn’t released an official version of “Never Break Heart,” but there is a video of him doing the song in his home studio.
January 22, 2021 @ 4:58 am
Dash Ampersand fans’ misguided excitement will go wanting.
We’re gonna need another lockdown to get through all the Jinks/Church catalog.
January 22, 2021 @ 5:58 am
I am going to listen to these with an open mind but I’ve yet to understand what the draw is with this guy. Virtually all of my friends that are big fans of his say the same things..
1. He is an artist that gets shunned by the establishment of country music and they do so because he actually makes real country music
2. They often tout him as some sort of alternative to the garbage out there.
I have a few problems with this. First an foremost, most of the music (with a few exceptions) is just not that good. Also, he is a super image conscious guy and it is fairly obvious to me that however much of an outsider he is, or how much he is shunned by the powers that be in country music, is definitely played up by him and his publicity team to shape his bad boy image or whatever. I also don’t buy the nonsense that his music is all that different than the rest of the mainstream stuff. It’s definitely not as cringeworthy as a lot of the bro country stuff and the country/rap bullshit.. but I think all that shit has watered down the genre so much that people are willing put anything up on a pedestal now and pretend like it’s the antidote or more deserving of praise than it actually is.
Just one more thing too, and this speaks to the badboy image point earlier. Take the damn aviator sunglasses off when your inside. It’s non-sense.
January 22, 2021 @ 6:55 am
He wears the sunglasses onstage because the lights bother his contacts. FFS, this has been said at least a million times by this point.
Why the fuck do you care if he wants to wear sunglasses inside, anyway?
January 22, 2021 @ 11:09 am
I can’t and won’t speak for Trenton, but I have found that generally people who wear sunglasses indoors, particularly one as conspicuous as Church’s are, are pompous douchebags.
And I say that as a big Eric Church fan.
January 22, 2021 @ 1:10 pm
So says The Original Pompous Douchebag.
January 22, 2021 @ 1:14 pm
I don’t understand people who think he’s no different than mainstream country artists.
You’re seriously gonna tell me the average Eric Church song sounds the same/similar to an average Thomas Rhett/Luke Bryan/Keith Urban/Blake Shelton song? Are you deaf??
Listen to the Mr. Misunderstood & Desperate Man albums. A good portion of the latter especially sounds more like Uncle Tupelo than any modern mainstream country artist.
January 22, 2021 @ 4:02 pm
Matt, I don’t care if he wears glasses or not. It just adds to his dueshiness in my opinion. I’ll even give him the benefit of the doubt.. let’s just say that the lights do bother his contacts, and there is no other way on planet earth to mitigate this besides wearing aviators everywhere. You gonna tell me that such a demonstrably image conscious guy isn’t being somewhat calculating with it. It’s gimmicky. Great artists don’t need a gimmick. Do you think Jason Isbell or John Moreland would ever have to do some shit like that to sell records? The songs don’t stand up on their own. That’s why there’s the need for all the fluff. And I did give the caveat that there are some of his songs that aren’t terrible. But “drink in my hand” and “round here buzz” for example could have both came from the Luke Bryan catalogue and nobody would’ve batted an eye. And it’s also a little pretentious that he has to go out into the woods and write for a month with 47 other people to make a record. That’s not a songwriter.
January 22, 2021 @ 6:25 pm
47 people to write songs huh. Maybe a bit over dramatic and grasping for straws trying to prove a pointless point.
January 23, 2021 @ 3:46 am
Okay.. 46.
January 23, 2021 @ 7:06 am
…complaining that he’s not as authentic as Isbell or Moreland *proves* that he’d meaningfully distinct from his mainstream peers, haha!
Eric Church is a mainstream pop country artist signed to a major label – Moreland and Isbell each have a reasonable claim to the title of “America’s Greatest Living Songwriter” (there are a few others up there, whom I also wouldn’t dispute).
Church is way poppier/more gimmicky than either of those two.
Church puts out a hell of a lot more quality songs, and boosts more great artists, than just about anyone else filling up stadiums for a major label – only person I’d put over him on that front is Stapleton…who’s no stranger to image-crafting, or writing bad pop-country songs, himself.
January 23, 2021 @ 10:33 am
How about Johnny Cash always dressing in black? Does that make him a “gimmick” or is that mitigated by him writing a song about why?
And actually, yes, Church’s songs DO stand up on their own.
February 9, 2021 @ 12:52 pm
Drink in my Hand, sure. But ‘Round Here Buzz’? The lyrics to that sogn are much better than 90% of country out there.
February 10, 2021 @ 4:23 am
“Catch me a ’round here buzz
Cause you ain’t ’round here none
Keep putting ’em down here, ‘nother round here
‘Til my down goes up“
Yeah. Profound.
January 23, 2021 @ 5:55 am
I like Church quite a bit – his stuff is very much “Baby’s First Steve Earle Record,” but he’s a great gateway drug from mainstream cuts to the more substantial stuff coming out of Texas and Oklahoma.
Chief and Mr. Misunderstood are equally accessible to people who love Luke Combs and people who are more on the Tom Petty/Dire Straits side of the Rock-Country spectrum…and from there, you can turn them onto albums like I Feel Alright, Diamonds and Gasoline, and Rose Queen.
…then you hit em with Southeastern, and there’s no going back!
January 23, 2021 @ 7:22 am
Agree 120%
January 22, 2021 @ 7:41 am
I liked his earlier stuff better. Seems like he is moving towards the “statement” crowd. Trying to be McGraw with an attitude. Look for him to eventually do a duet with Marren Morris. That would be the ultimate puke.
January 22, 2021 @ 9:00 am
So if “&” is only available on physical copy to his fan club, does that mean it will not be digital anywhere either? Or will it be on streaming services, but only physical copies available to fan club?
January 22, 2021 @ 1:04 pm
Tyler. I sent a question to his management with your exact query. I live in Ireland and there is no way I am paying for the cost of a physical album. He should have released a double album. Twelve tracks on each. He is a prick, albeit a good one.
January 28, 2021 @ 8:02 am
Tyler, still waiting. Calling him a prick was being nice.
January 22, 2021 @ 9:25 am
I’ve liked all the songs he has released so far. Although the acoustic version of Never Break Heart is pretty blah. Hopefully, it will more kick with a band.
I will say the production as a whole seems toned down for Joyce. There were times on Desperate Man where I had trouble even understanding Church over the loud production. I have no such trouble on the pre-released material.
I have high hopes that this album will be more Sinners than Desperate Man.
January 22, 2021 @ 12:47 pm
The studio version of Never Break Heart sounds FANTASTIC sonically. When one of his tour people, Mark Earp, died earlier this year there was a tribute video for him with part of the studio version of the song. There’s so much energy and the production is really fantastic. Honestly, I see it as a potential single.
And agreed, production wise it sounds a lot better then a lot of DM. Sounds more like Sinners, that’s for sure.
January 22, 2021 @ 12:48 pm
I dont like “Bad Mother Trucker” all that much, but its still better than the low points on Desperate Man (Hanging Around and Higher Wire imo). I’m with you that the rest of them are solid.
January 26, 2021 @ 9:30 am
Higher wire is weirdly assume live though.
January 22, 2021 @ 6:33 pm
three albums ?…..reminds me of the old steve martin line
“I write about a hundred songs a day …a few are keepers “
January 23, 2021 @ 6:16 am
“Crazyland” stands out to me among the pre-releases. I hope there’s more where that came from.
January 23, 2021 @ 11:51 am
Dumb question about Double albums..
But in the world of streaming, are the songs separated by disc at all??
Or is it a massive dump of all 30 Wallen songs?
It should be separated like:
Part 1:
1
2
3
4… Etc
Part 2:
16.
17.
18.. Etc
** is it not like this on streaming? What’s the point of calling it a double album if it’s only listed as so for physical releases?
January 23, 2021 @ 11:54 am
Technically this isn’t a triple album…. Just 3 separate albums – so Trig I don’t think this will necessarily benefit in streaming. If it’s being marketing as a box set then yes… But with 3 different release dates.. I’m not sure.
January 23, 2021 @ 12:11 pm
Good point. Well, it is still a triple album, but how the charts read it will be interesting. With the separate release dates, they may mark them separately. Or maybe they will combine them.
January 23, 2021 @ 8:55 pm
I am more interested in how the CMAs and ACMs think of these records. Will Church and his team have to only push one of the 3 or will it be counted as one project. Don’t think anybody has ever done this before (minus Stapleton’s From A Room, Volumes 1+2…but those were completely separate projects. This is not.) Only time will tell.
January 23, 2021 @ 9:08 pm
Another good question, and Church is usually a contender for Album of the Year and won it multiple times.
January 23, 2021 @ 9:14 pm
Yeah, as a big fan of his that was my first question. Lots of questions about the record in general. At this point, he has nothing to prove, so he might just not care about Album of the Year anymore.
This project is very interesting because there’s obviously tons of buzz about it, leading to a lot of speculation over the last year. It’s also funny how this news got leaked and pushed him to do the official press release a week early. Regardless, I’m pumped about this. 24 songs by my favorite artist!
January 24, 2021 @ 8:45 am
The only thing worse than three Eric Church albums at once would be four Eric Church albums at once. This guy is a mediocre talent and a product of the Music Row machine. He surrounds himself with songwriters that are a part of all the bro-country songs and all the other typical machine artists like Luke Bryan and Sam Hunt, his wife was a song plugger/office girl on Music Row, his guitar player, Driver, is the silver-spoon kid of former BMI president and Martha White Flour heir Jody Williams, and brother to Sony song-plugger Ed Williams, Eric co-owns a pub company with one of the douchiest frat boys, music biz people named Arturo Benohora and they actually own pub on Casey Beathard, one of the writers listed here(likely others), his producer Jay Joyce also produces acts like Little Big Town, Zac Brown, and Keith Urban. Just saying the outsider image is just a contrived image. I think it’s great to build a solid team of successful people around you but Eric Church IS playing the game and not doing anything different. Plus, the tone of his voice is unbearable.
January 30, 2021 @ 3:20 am
Looking forward to the albums but disappointed I will not be able to get ‘&’ on CD. Just 9 tracks on a CD is disappointing as well……..The tracks released so far have been good.
February 8, 2021 @ 2:16 pm
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