Two of country music's finest singer-songwriters — Hayes Carll and Brandy Clark — team up for a duet on "In the Mean Time," a honky-tonk waltz about a couple well past the honeymoon phase choosing to stick together through the tough times.
"In the mean time/ the holler and scream time/ the crush all your dreams time/ the can't hardly breathe time," Carll and Clark sing. "When faith gets forgotten/ and hope falls behind/ the love that we had turns bitter and bad, in the mean time."
Carll says the song is about how even the best intentioned couples can show one another the worst versions of themselves.
"I'd been carrying this idea around for a while and Brandy, who I really admire, helped turn it into one of my favorite songs not only through writing it with me but also singing so beautifully on it," Carll tells Wide Open Country. "It's a song about the damage couples — regardless of how much love they share — can inflict on each other when they're at their worst."
Listen to "In the Mean Time" below.
"In the Mean Time" is the latest release from Carll's forthcoming album You Get it All (out Oct. 29).
"I like to tug at heartstrings, find commonality with others, reflect on my own life, and sometimes I do it in a lighthearted way," Carll says in a press release. "A lot of musical styles found their way onto this record, but my first and most formative influences came from country music. This is a country singer-songwriter record. It's just unapologetically me."
The Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter previously released 2011's KMAG YOYO (& Other American Stories), 2016's Lovers and Leavers and 2019's What it Is.
You Get it All is available for pre-order here.
