Yallwire News

When an artist records a Christmas album, you might think it would be difficult to find their own twist on holiday classics, but for Sugarland, they stuck to what they knew. Jennifer Nettles tells CMT, "We just do what we do." She continues, "We don't know how to do anything else, so it's pretty easy to keep that when you're just being yourself and we love to experiment and to explore, and to stretch in any way. Our fans have come to expect that, and anticipate that, and get excited about it – so it's fun!"

One thing they explored for their Gold And Green album was Jennifer's bilingual abilities, which are displayed on "Silent Night." Kristian Bush laughs, "It's difficult for me not to fall madly in love with her while she is singing in Spanish." He goes on, "I just love her accent. She is such a great linguist, and is not just fluent in Spanish, but graduated with a degree in Spanish. It's such a beautiful thing to hear [her] voice take on the roundness of that accent, and then to deliver it with the emotion of what 'Silent Night' is. It kind of makes my knees weak." A Spanish accent is a far cry from what Jennifer is usually recognized for: her Southern twang. She says, "I do think it's fun when you talk about it, because people always make comments about how Southern I am. Obviously, when I'm singing in Spanish, it sounds different, and some people [say], 'Well, wait a minute. What's real, and what's not?' But when you hear the Beatles, or when you hear the Rolling Stones, they're British, but they don't sing like they're in the musical, 'Oliver.' The way you sing is different from the way you speak sometimes... and sometimes it's not." Sugarland's Gold And Green is available now.