Florida Georgia Line hasn't performed together in a blue moon, but Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard have thoughts on why exactly that is. The recent closure of their joint bar has reunited the feud between the two with each giving their side of the story.
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According to Billboard, Hubbard blames Kelley for why the band broke up. He said that Kelley wanted to go out and do his own thing. Hubbard wanted to keep the band together, but Kelley wanted to go solo.
"For me, it was really unexpected. But BK came to me and said, 'Man, I'm really feeling like I want to do a solo thing. And I'm like, 'Really?' We were just getting out of our first deal. We were kind of in a sweet spot that we had worked for 10 years to get to," Hubbard recalled. "I'm like, 'Why don't we ride this thing out for like five more years, 10 more years, and then we can do the solo thing or whatever.' But again, like, I wanted to support him. He was adamant, like, 'Nah, now's my time. I really need to do this for myself.' And I'm like, 'Well, hey, whatever you need to do, bro. Like, what do you want from me?' He's like, 'I just want support.'"
"Like, we've had an incredible ride. This is where it's going to go. Like, let's do it and crush it, and you never know. Maybe it'll bring us back together and we can have a reunion tour or whatever," Hubbard continued. "But he definitely initiated the whole thing from the beginning and it kind of -- when I say caught me off guard, it wasn't like we had never mentioned it before -- it was just one of those things where I didn't think it was going to happen then, you know what I mean?"
Hubbard compared the break up of Florida Georgia Line to a divorce. He said Kelley wanted to have a solo career while keeping the band going. However, Hubbard disagreed.
"There was definitely a period of time where I was confused, like, 'Why?' And I even told him, we had good conversations around it ... it felt like a divorce ... BK had this thing were he wanted to still do Florida Georgia Line, but he wanted to do the solo thing, too, and I had to tell him ... I can't do both," Hubbard shared. He said he couldn't do both. "I said, 'I'm going to give you the choice, but it's either Florida Georgia Line or solo careers.' I don't have capacity to do two careers, and also it's going to get super sticky. When we're writing songs, who are we writing for? When we got two show offers, an FGL date and a solo date, what are we taking? I don't even logistically see how that would work, much less emotionally."
Brian Kelley Talks Florida Georgia Line Split
Meanwhile, Kelley said that Hubbard fractured the band. Kelley had the idea of keeping the band going while branching out at the same time. He said a lot of bands have done it.
"I had voiced that I want to obviously keep doing FGL, but for me, in my off time, when songwriters, creatives are alone, you find even more of yourself. Over the years ... there are going to be songs that I write ... that aren't going to fit the brand of FGL, and so it was important to me to continue to honor my artistry, my songwriting, and so I had voiced that for a long time," Kelley said. "It wasn't a surprise, because the marker was that once the deal was up ... I had an idea that once the deal was up, Tyler would get a solo deal under the same label, I would get a record deal and we would renegotiate a new record deal."
Kelley wanted to have a long three-hour show where they played individually and then played as Florida Georgia Line. However, Kelley disagreed with the idea.
"I wanted to do it all," Kelley said. "It wasn't out of bounds. You look at Lady A — Hillary [Scott] does some solo records in the Christian space; Charles Kelley has done some solo stuff, he does some shows and I love how that operates. I think that's pretty special that you can honor yourself and you can honor what you built ... that's the mindset that I had. It wasn't just that I had to have a solo career — I would word it as 'I want a solo outlet, as a creative, as a songwriter.' I wanted to reshape that part of the story. It gets sticky about what things go where? I think it's easy to figure out. It's not an emotional thing for me when we're talking about business and creativity."
