Little Big Town likes to play as a foursome, as the ensemble’s composition as a vocal quartet shows. So the country-pop group didn’t want to mark their 25th anniversary with just one commemoration, but with four: a national tour with their longtime friends in Sugarland; a greatest hits album; a Christmas record; and the quartet’s first two-hour primetime special, “Little Big Town’s Christmas at the Opry,” airing tonight on NBC. They couldn’t have picked a better way to celebrate.fourth a century together.

As icing on the cake, members Karen Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Phillip Sweet and Jimi Westbrook can enjoy this milestone, with most would agree that they look and sound almost exactly the same as they did when they formed in the late 1990s. Your secret? “Smoke and mirrors,” says Westbrook. “I was going to lie and say that every night after the show we go into cryogenic chambers and they just bring us back to normal. No, I don’t know – we just keep arguing and striving for it. And we have fun, that’s the best part,” as it turns out, the family, working on complicated four-part harmonies together, stays together.

Here lies another key to their endurance: the lack of competition. Not that they don’t have to fight for the same chart spots as everyone else, but there’s no other group in country that really steps in their lane than a harmony-based group without a single frontman stepping in before the other . Fairchild does have more lead vocals than the others, so there’s no forced balance, but it’s not like they’ve resisted the constant pressure to get anyone to pursue a solo career over the last 25 years; Fans love the fact that all four villagers are needed to create this town.

“People – and when I say people, I mean gatekeepers – always really want to define things with a singer or a sound,” Fairchild says. “And I mean, thank God the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles didn’t do that, you know? What a crime it would have been not to hear George Harrison sing. Those were the times when there weren’t so many boundaries for people, so I’m proud of us for following that path.”

“What kind of stopped us from being successful in the earlier days was that we were different,” says Westbrook, “and they said, ‘You have to pick a lead singer and stick with it.’ We always said, “No, that.” harmony is the lead singer.’”

Their manager for the last 12 of these years, Jason Owen of Sandbox Entertainment, doesn’t shy away from comparisons to Fleetwood Mac. At a few TV appearances or concert appearances throughout their career, they covered Mac’s slow-burning rock song “The Chain,” and Owen was the one who convinced them to finally make it a regular part of their tour this year. “That’s because Karen and Jimi are married, so in a way you have a relationship balance that defines Fleetwood Mac,” he points out – although without the poor domestic results, the Buckingham & Nicks or the two McVies. “And the Eagles — I think they fall into that world a little bit more than, say, Alabama and some of the larger groups of the past.”

As we speak, the group has just arrived in Boston for a headlining show after a very bumpy bus ride into the city. It wasn’t their first experience with potholes – they had a few of them in the early years of their careers. “It certainly wasn’t a straight line, that’s for sure,” Fairchild says. “It was more like the Rocky Mountains.”

Their double-platinum country hit “Boondocks” put them on the map in 2005, but their first four albums were released on three different labels, which didn’t bode well for stability. Then in 2011, a year after founding Sandbox, Owen took over management and hired producer Jay Joyce to shake up their sound a bit. The result was her first number 1 hit a year later, the five-times platinum “Pontoon”. Further No. 1 hits in the form of “Girl Crush” and the Taylor Swift-penned “Better Man” helped ensure that a “Greatest Hits” collection would be well warranted long before Year 25 came to an end for them Door stood.

They have now been at number 1 on the list of the most popular acts in the industry for the 25th year. (This is unofficial, by the way, but trust us.) Westbrook says, “There are ups and downs in this business, and there were a lot of downs for us in the beginning. But we learned early on in this process that if we stay in this business for a long time, we’re going to see these people and they’re going to move around and change positions and we’re going to be somewhere else, and that’s what’s important To be respectful towards people. I think we’re all raised that way too, just to be kind to people, and it’s definitely something that means something to us and means something to the people we have around us along the way who care about others . That’s just who we are and who our families are, and it’s nice to hear that people appreciate that. We just love people, I guess.”

It was easy to associate Little Big Town with Christmas, even without a holiday release, just because they have participated in and even hosted “CMA Christmas” specials in the past. It was also personal. Owen says, “Every December for the past 15 years, Blackberry Farm has hosted a charity event to raise money for education in Tennessee, and it is tradition that we do nothing beyond that, including on New Year’s Eve. We spend four or five days celebrating, reflecting and enjoying each other. And every year, for 15 years, I sit in this audience and have tears in my eyes when I see what Christmas songs they sing and how they sing them, and then I think, “God, we have to make this Christmas record!” And now we’ve actually done it, but at a time when I felt like we could get it set up properly. So I sold the NBC special to have that platform, and it has a very ’70s feel, an old Johnny and June vibe.”

The NBC special, filmed at the Grand Ole Opry, has a guest list that includes Josh Groban, Sheryl Crow, Kelsea Ballerini and Kate Hudson. Fairchild says, “It kind of reminds me of those old vaudeville shows, or the days of the Barbara Mandrell shows and the Sonny and Cher show and the Johnny Cash show — it gave me all those vibes, in addition to the holiday vibes. “

The Christmas album “Glow” was produced by Dave Cobb in Savannah in late 2023. “We drove to Savannah, Georgia to record in his studio,” says Schlapman, “and when we got there he had the whole place decorated for Christmas and there were Santa hats hanging everywhere and twinkling lights inside” – and the palm trees swayed outside. “We’ve never made a record out of town – other than the Pharrell record (produced by Williams) that we attended in LA – but overall we’ve never gone anywhere. And it was wonderful to get out of the day-to-day chaos and get to a place where we were just focused on making this music. We loved it. And Dave is such a genius.”

The tracks also include a cover of Merle Haggard’s downbeat “If We Make It Through December,” which Cobb insisted on. “It’s truly one of my favorite things to do in a long time,” Fairchild says. “In its purest Merle form, it would feel like a bit of a stretch for us on a Christmas record, but Dave said, ‘What if you guys wrote this yourself?’ And we just sat there and came up with melodies and phrasing that were completely different than Merle. I really hope Merle doesn’t turn in her grave. I hope he looks down from heaven and says, ‘That’s kind of cool, these kids.'”