Lady Antebellum have been enjoying the spunkiest and sauciest hit of their career with the chart-topping single “Downtown,” even as the videos and promotional appearances for it feature Hillary Scott looking ever-so-more pregnant. As the band takes the stage for an exclusive Yahoo! Music performance, the average viewer might not notice Scott’s expectancy all that much, thanks to the miracles of slimming black. Still, there is that moment when Scott pleads “I don’t know why you don’t take me downtown anymore” that you might imagine her partner’s response reasonably being, “Um, because your water might break?” Even with the blessed event being just weeks away — Scott’s baby girl, her first, is due in late July — the trio haven’t lost a step, and if anything, have been compressing about six months’ worth of the usual album promotion into roughly half that time. “I can probably speak for everybody on our team and say it’s easier to promote a record when someone’s not pregnant,” Scott says. “For sure!” “Fewer naps in the middle of the day,” adds Dave Haywood. It’s not clear whether the guitarist is speaking for Scott or himself when it comes to increased narcolepsy, but… “The pacing has definitely had to be different,” says Scott, in the course of promoting Golden, their fourth album. “I mean, we’ve traveled to the same places that we always do when we promote records. But there’s this crazy thing that happens when you’re pregnant. Like, when the baby says, ‘Mom, I’m tired,’ your body just stops and you just kind of start staring through people and not even meaning to. But it’s been good. I haven’t been sick, which has been really nice. Thankfully, my energy level has been high.” Keeping the energy level up was assuredly a priority during the creation of Golden… if you’ll forgive the segue. The group admits wanting to change things up after 2011′s Own the Night, even though there could just as easily have been an if-it-ain’t-broke attitude, since that release did produce two successive No. 1 country singles (“Just a Kiss,” “We Owned the Night”) and a third that fell just one position shy of the top slot (“Dancin’ Away With My Heart”). But as great as those romantic duets sounded on the radio, the trio noticed some potholes going unfilled on the road. “With the big ballads and mid-tempos, especially in our live show, there’s only so many ways you can perform them and it not start to look really repetitive, with Charles and I singing to each other,” says Scott.        

 Read More…