Sugarland

Jennifer Nettles

• Vocalist and songwriter

Kristian Bush

• Singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

Contribution: The Grammy Award-winning country music group Sugarland is easily recognizable for the powerhouse voice of lead singer Jennifer Nettles. Their best-known song is a ballad called “Stay” from their album Enjoy the Ride (2006). The band returned in 2018 after a multiyear hiatus and released the album Bigger.

Background

As a child, Jennifer Odessa Nettles sang in church and was influenced by gospel, country, blues, folk, and rock music. Nettles studied sociology and anthropology at Agnes Scott College, a small liberal arts school in Georgia, graduating in 1997. While there, she met Cory Jones, a guitarist, and formed a band called Soul Miner’s Daughter. In 1998, she formed the Jennifer Nettles Band and toured with Lilith Fair the following year.

Kristian Merrill Bush began playing music at age three and studied classical violin before picking up the guitar at age twelve. He attended the Webb School of Knoxville and played in a local band called Masada. In 1988, he enrolled at Atlanta’s Emory University, where he studied creative writing. After graduating in 1992, Bush became a member of the folk-rock duo Billy Pilgrim with Andrew Hyra (brother of actor Meg Ryan) during the early 1990s. Billy Pilgrim released a self-titled album in 1994 and an album called Bloom (1995) with Atlantic Records. The group toured with renowned artist Melissa Etheridge in 1995.

Nettles and Bush were both living and performing in Atlanta when they met singer-songwriter Kristen Hall. Hall invited Bush to form a band called Sugarland and asked Nettles to join several months later. In the early years of Sugarland, Nettles provided lead vocals, while Bush and Hall contributed backup vocals and acoustic guitar.

Career

In September 2002, the trio played their first gig at Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Georgia. They signed with the record label MCA Nashville in 2003 and released their debut album, Twice the Speed of Life, in 2004. Sugarland’s success was immediate and overwhelming, but Hall left the band to focus on songwriting. They gave their final performance as a trio in December 2005. Hall later filed a lawsuit against Bush and Nettles in July 2008 over a trademark and profits dispute; they reached an undisclosed settlement in November 2010.

Sugarland was nominated for a Grammy Award for best new artist in 2006 and widened their fan base when Nettles teamed up with Jon Bon Jovi for the hit country-rock song “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.” Sugarland’s second album—their first as a duo—was titled Enjoy the Ride (2006) and includes one of the band’s most popular songs, “Stay,” as well as the chart-topping singles “Settlin’” and “Want To.” “Stay” was named the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Song of the Year and Single Record of the Year in 2007 and nominated for the 2008 Grammy Awards for best country song and for best country performance by a duo or group with vocals, winning the latter. Sugarland also won the ACM award for top vocal duo in 2008 over country mainstay Brooks & Dunn, who had taken home the award fifteen times in the preceding seventeen years.

Exhausted from constant touring and the rushed recording of Enjoy the Ride, the duo returned to Atlanta to record their next album, Love on the Inside (2008). Nettles and Bush cowrote every song on the album. In 2009, Sugarland released a Christmas album called Gold and Green and a live album called Live on the Inside. The following year, they released the studio album The Incredible Machine. Inspired by John Hughes’s films Pretty in Pink (1986) and The Breakfast Club (1985), among other influences, the album was widely considered their biggest artistic risk to date.

In August 2011, a stage at the Indiana State Fair collapsed, killing seven concertgoers and injuring many others who were awaiting a Sugarland performance. The band was subsequently involved in a class-action lawsuit filed by survivors and victims’ families. Sugarland, along with Live Nation and other defendants in the case, settled for $39 million in December 2014. Although Bush and Nettles did not formally sever their partnership, they each pursued solo projects beginning in 2013. During their hiatus, Bush released the solo album Southern Gravity (2015) and wrote the musical Troubadour (2017), while Nettles worked with rock producer Rick Rubin on That Girl (2014) and also released Playing with Fire (2016).

Bush and Nettles made a surprise appearance together in 2017 when they jointly presented the Vocal Duo of the Year Award at the Country Music Association (CMA) Awards, sparking talk of renewed collaboration. The following year, the duo reunited to record the comeback LP Bigger and created the music video "Babe," featuring country-pop star Taylor Swift. "Babe" was nominated for the 2019 CMA Music Video of the Year and the CMT Music Awards' Duo Video of the Year and Collaborative Video of the Year. The band resumed touring together with their Still the Same Tour.

In 2018, Sugarland signed a new recording contract with the Big Machine label and quickly returned to the studio. The result was Bigger, their sixth album. Featuring a song called "Babe" that included a guest appearance by Taylor Swift, Bigger was a hit with fans that reached number two on the country music charts. Sugarland also continued touring and released an EP called There Goes the Neighborhood in 2024, marking a continuation of their post-reunion work.

Impact

Sugarland has become one of country music’s most popular acts, in part because Nettles and Bush’s ability to sample different genres in their music has won them an eclectic fan base. They cite diverse musical influences ranging from pop-rockers R.E.M. and Peter Gabriel to country classic Johnny Cash to reggae artist Bob Marley, and they have even borrowed concert antics from psychedelic rock band the Flaming Lips. Their genre-bending style earned them four consecutive CMA Awards for Vocal Duo of the Year (2007–11), several ACM Awards, and a Grammy Award. Commercial success has allowed them to pursue their own musical interests both as Sugarland and as solo artists.

Personal Life

Nettles was married to club owner Todd Van Sickle from 1998 to 2007. Nettles married entrepreneur and former model Justin Miller in November 2011. Miller appeared in the music video for the Sugarland song “Want To” in 2006. Nettles has one son, Magnus Hamilton, born in 2012. She wrote the 2018 cookbook Sweet, Savory & Simple and appeared in the 2019 film Harriet.

Bush was married to Jill Joyner from 1999 to 2011. They had two children, Camille and Tucker.

Bibliography

Caramanica, Jon. “New CDs: Sugarland.” Rev. of The Incredible Machine, by Sugarland. The New York Times, 18 Oct. 2010.

Nettles, Jennifer, and Kristian Bush. “The Territory of Sugarland (Maps Handy).” Interview by Alan Light. The New York Times, 27 July 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/arts/music/27ligh.html. Accessed 4 May 2026.

"Sugarland." AllMusic, 2024, www.allmusic.com/artist/sugarland-mn0000484880. Accessed 2 May 2026.

“Sugarland.” Sugarland Official Website, 2024, www.sugarlandmusic.com/. Accessed 2 May 2026.