The members of Lady Antebellum are just days away from releasing their new album, 747, and will be hitting the media circuit next week. The group will kick-off the week with a three-song performance on TODAY (9/30) followed by an intimate performance at the Gramercy Theater that night for a Yahoo! live stream event starting at 8pm ET. The band will also stop at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (10/1) to perform their multi-week smash hit single “Bartender.”  

This week, Lady Antebellum announced the 7FOR7 project where they will give seven surprises for seven fans in seven days. The week-long celebration will take them across the country where they will help make some deserving fans’ wildest dreams come true. Videos clips from each of the seven stops will be posted on Facebook.com daily.

For this new album, the band was challenged to think outside of the box by none other than Charles Kelley’s wife. “I think we were definitely challenged, and we were very honest with ourselves, that we had maybe not pushed ourselves to evolve like I know we can, and we should have,” says Charles. “We just needed a little time and a reason to kind of do. It wasn’t until now, this past year, I don’t know, man. We just had this fire lit where we were ready to kick ass again.”

Lady A (make a statement) OC: …make a statement. 1:34
“My wife is brutally honest, and she’s not the most musical person, but she is a very… you know, a good example of a listener, or someone that would be a fan of our music, and she said, ‘Charles, I really want you guys to stretch yourselves a little bit. I know you’ve got better songs.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean by that? Better songs? This is great stuff?’ And she said, ‘I know, but I’ve heard that before. Y’all have done this before.’ And it really made me mad, because I was like, ‘This is who we are. This is what we do. I’m not all of a sudden gonna go do something else, just because it’s popular. I don’t write those songs. We don’t write that way.’ She’s like, ‘I know, but just let yourself try different things.’ It kinda stuck with me and pissed me off, but in a good way. It wasn’t until we started writing these songs…they scared me when we were writing. Songs like ‘Bartender; and ‘Freestyle,’ where after we finished them, it was like, ‘Whoa, we can write these kinds of songs. And do them in our way.’ I think we were definitely challenged, and we were very honest with ourselves, that we had maybe not pushed ourselves to evolve like I know we can, and we should have. We just needed a little time and a reason to kind of do. It wasn’t until now, this past year, I don’t know, man. We just had this fire lit where we were ready to kick ass again. We were ready to really get out there, and make a statement.”