After Taylor Swift co-wrote and sang on Sugarland’s recent song “Babe,” the pop megastar reached out to singers Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush and said, “OK, we’re going to do a video for this, right?” They responded, “Sure.” Swift had an idea. “Her idea email was an entire treatment,” Bush says with a laugh, by phone from his Atlanta home.
“I remember my response being two things,” he continues. “One: ‘If you ever quit your day job, you should do this for a living.’ And two: ‘I have a crazy idea. How about if I play every character outside the (main) characters?’ And she was like, ‘This is genius.'”
Thus did Bush, in his beard, hat and glasses, wind up making Alfred Hitchcock-like cameos as a TV reporter, bartender and a man walking a dog. The video is about a love triangle between Nettles, her husband and Swift as a homewrecker, and Bush appears for a total of about 10 seconds, but he connected with the roles. He has been a mostly anonymous guy in the band with the colorful and charismatic Nettles since 2002.
“It’s so funny how this goes, in many ways, with me in bands — culturally, (fans) know I’m standing there, they’re just not quite sure what I do,” said the 48-year-old singer, guitarist and songwriter. “It’s a really fun way to play with that reality.”