Sugarland Climbs Another Mountain

Sugarland is all smiles with the Single and Song of the Year awards backstage at the 43rd Annual ACM Awards, Sunday, May 18, 2008 in Las Vegas, NV. Photo by David Vespie.

Aug. 6, 2008 — Sugarland notched a No. 1 country album with the release of the duo’s new Love On The Inside CD, and now they’ve hit the top of yet another chart: They were listed at No. 1 yesterday in USA Today’s Mediabase country singles chart as "All I Want To Do" received more airplay than any other song in the genre in the previous week.

Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush have worked extremely hard between touring, recording and promoting their album, so they’ve not had much time to sit back and reflect on their accomplishments the last few weeks. In fact, Jennifer is still trying to come to grips with some of the accolades that have come their way in the last 12 months.

In November, the Country Music Association named them Duo of the Year, an honor that has gone to Brooks & Dunn more often than not since the early 1990s.

That win was "sweetly surprising," Jennifer told the Cox News Service. "It felt like it was a sign, not only of our growth, but more acceptance within the industry."

Confirmation of that came in May when "Stay" won Single and Song of the Year from the Academy of Country Music. Only four solo songwriters have written the Song of the Year and had it also win Single, and Jennifer is the only woman to pull that off.

"That was a high honor, one that is still sinking in," Jennifer said. "It will be a long time before I really can emotionally grasp what it means to have won that award and what it means to be the only woman. I'm really blown away by that. Wouldn't that be a wonderful gift if women could see that and be inspired?"

"Stay" is featured on NOW That’s What I Call Country, a compilation that comes out Aug. 26. Among the 20 hits featured are songs by Brad Paisley, Gary Allan, Sara Evans, George Strait, Dierks Bentley and Rascal Flatts.