Luke Combs tries his hand at bluegrass on “The Great Divide,” a new collaboration with Billy Strings.
The reflective song penned by Luke, Billy and Wyatt Durrett offers an aerial perspective of the division they’re witnessing across the nation, comparing the energy to that of a fire. But in the same breath as expressing worries that it seems difficult to get along with those on the other side of the ideological fence, Luke recognizes symbols of unity such as seeing “strangers love each other like a mother does her son.”
“We’re all so far/So far apart now/It’s as deep as it is wide/We’re about to fall apart now/If we can’t reach the other side/We’ve got to find a way to cross/The great divide,” Luke sings, with subtle backing harmonies from Billy.
“Something that I’ve always wanted to do is write and put out a bluegrass album,” Luke explains in a statement. “This is a song that was supposed to be a part of that project. It’s not a lead single or a lead-in to that project yet, because that is not done. But it felt like the right time to put this song out.”
“When we wrote it, there were a lot of crazy things going on in the world. There’s still a lot of crazy things going on in the world. And I just felt like I had some stuff to say,” he continues. “It’s not meant to be political. It’s not meant to try and tell you what to think or tell you how to believe. That’s not my job. It’s just a guy kinda saying the way he was feeling when he wrote it.”
By Cillea Houghton
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