Harmony Gerber/Getty ImagesBack in March, Hootie & the Blowfish singer Darius Rucker posted a photo of himself in a London studio with Ed Sheeran and some other musicians, and said he was “having a blast writing” with them. Now we know a bit more about what came of that session.
The New York Times reports that Darius and Ed co-wrote a song called “Wildfire Love,” which Hootie & the Blowfish have recorded for their forthcoming album. Darius tells The Times that when he and the other band members were collaborating with outside writers like Ed on the new project, he told them, “We don’t want you to write the Hootie song. Write a song and we’ll make it sound like Hootie.”
There’s no release date yet for the new album, but Darius and the band are on the road celebrating the 25th anniversary of their best-selling album Cracked Rear View. Looking back on the band’s mid-’90s success, Darius attempts to explain why that album was such a runaway success.
“We had just gone through three or four years of record sales not being that good, and grunge being the big thing on the radio,” he tells the Times. “And then all of a sudden we’re saying, ‘Hold my hand.’ You know, these great little hooks that were undeniable, and people wanted to hear that. They wanted to hear it again and again.”
That’s despite the fact that to Darius, “Hold My Hand” was a “protest song.”
He admits, “For me, that song was always about racism.”
Hootie & the Blowfish’s Group Therapy summer tour wraps up September 13 in the band’s hometown of Columbia, S.C.
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