Last week Eric Church announced his plans to release a triple album, Heart & Soul, in April. The 24-track project stems from a 28-day writing retreat the singer went on in the mountains of North Carolina in early 2020, which he discussed in a new interview with his record label.

"I’ve always been intrigued when a song is born in a writer room – there is a magic that happens there," Church said. "I wanted to put that in the studio form. So, every day, we would write a song in the morning and we would record the song that night. Doing it that way allowed for the songwriters to get involved in the studio process and the musicians to be involved in the creative process. You felt a little bit like you were secretly doing something that was special, and you knew it… You started going, 'hmm, wait ’til the world finds out about this.'"

"The interesting thing about this process is that Jay kept asking me the last three or four days, ‘Are we done?’ and at that time I didn’t know what the project was," Church said of the album producer and longtime collaborator Jay Joyce. "I kept saying 'God, this is going to be really hard. There’s a lot here. Is this a double album? And if it’s a double album, how do we leave out these five or six songs?' I am the hardest critic on making sure every song deserves to be on the record, and I beat this thing to death going 'this can’t be that good.' But, it was just a special, special time and a special, special project that I think will be among our best."

Heart & Soul will be released in three phases starting with Heart, due out on April 16, & arriving on April 20, and Soul on April 23. The Church Choir can pre-order Heart & Soul beginning Thursday, January 28, with white vinyl versions of all three albums available exclusively to fan club members. Pre-orders for the general public will begin on January 29.

Heart & Soul is Church's first new album since 2018's Desperate Man. The complete tracklist for each record can be seen below.

Rick Woodell

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