Sugarland
Biography Sugarland
Sugarland
Kristian Bush, one half of platinum-selling country duo Sugarland, has been leaving his mark on music for more than two decades. His debut solo album, Southern Gravity, was released in April 2015, featuring the Top 20 single “Trailer Hitch.” The album received rave reviews from Rolling Stone, The Boston Globe, and the Sydney Morning Herald, among many others. Country Weekly called it the “feel-good album of the year”.
Kristian is a Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist who started his career with folk rock duo Billy Pilgrim in the early ’90s. He and partner Andrew Hyra released a much-lauded pair of albums for Atlantic Records (their 1994 self-titled debut and 1995’s Bloom), earning multiple Top 5 singles on the AAA charts, rotation on VH1, and a reputation as dynamic live performers who traveled from the tiny stage of Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Georgia, to a worldwide tour supporting Melissa Etheridge in 1995.
Kristian founded Sugarland in 2002; in 2004, he and singer Jennifer Nettles exploded onto the music scene, surpassing sales of over 22 million albums worldwide, achieving fve No. 1 singles and winning numerous awards, including trophies from the Grammys, AMAs, ACM Awards, CMT Music Awards and CMA Awards. In October of 2012, they were inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame.
To date, Kristian has won six BMI Awards for his songwriting abilities, and in 2011 founded the music publishing company and songwriting collective Songs of the Architect. He made his solo debut in 2013 at the inaugural C2C: Country to Country Festival, held at the O2 Arena in London. His first release as a solo act, “Love or Money,” debuted in the UK and Europe the following week. The song is now featured in the hit mobile game My Singing Monsters, where Bush lends his voice to the green furry “Shugabush.”
In 2016, Kristian wrote and performed “Forever Now (Say Yes),” the theme song for the hit TLC reality series Say Yes To The Dress. And in 2017, his songs anchored the world-premiere musical Troubadour, which he co-wrote with acclaimed playwright Janece Shaffer. The musical debuted at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, starring Radney Foster and Zach Seabaugh, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called Kristian’s songs “magnificent,” with a “power that cannot be discounted.”
Kristian teamed with BBR Music Group labelmate Lindsay Ell to produce her debut album, The Project, debuting #1 on Billboard’s country album charts. The Project was named Billboard Magazine’s #1 Critic’s Choice Country Album for 2017 and produced Lindsay’s’ first #1 song Criminal (*Mediabase Canada).
At the 51st CMA Award in November of 2017, Sugarland surprised the county music world, by reuniting after a five-year hiatus, to present the Vocal Duo of the Year Award. Halfway through 2018, Sugarland release their sixth studio album BIGGER, that included the hit Babe, written by Pat Monahan and Taylor Swift. Babe became one of the Top 75 Most Played Songs of 2018.
Kristian sits on the board of the Atlanta Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, a frequent performer on the Grand Ole Opry, and regularly appears as part of the CMA Songwriters Series in cities around the world. He also teamed up with Bob Harris of BBC2 to provide coverage of CMA’s annual Music Fest. On top of staying busy with producing, performing and writing, he has a podcast out via Bobby Bones’ iHeart Media’s Nashville Podcast Network called Geeking Out and co-wrote the musical Troubadour which became Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre’s biggest ticket seller for 2017.
In 2019, Kristian started a new rock band with Benji Shanks and his brother Brandon, called Dark Water and released their debut self-titled album. And in 2020, during the COVID pandemic, brought Billy Pilgrim into the the digital age by re-releasing In the Time Machine to the DSPs as well as two pre-internet-albums, Words Like Numbers and St. Christopher’s Crossings.
