Little Big Town Goes to New Heights with ‘Rocket Man’ at 53rd Annual ACM Awards

Little Big Town took to the ACM Awards stage Sunday night (April 15) to pay tribute to music legend Elton John with their rendition of the rock-and-roll classic, “Rocket Man.”

Focusing on out-of-this-world harmonies, LBT took the song to new heights by putting their own twang on the track. Jimi Westbrook took lead while the rest of the band supplied jaw-dropping background vocals.

This was not the first time the Vocal Group of the Year Nominees put their name behind the song, they also recorded the track for the countrified Elton John tribute album, Restoration. 

“One of the main reasons why we chose ‘Rocket Man’ was because we were so intrigued by not just, of course, Elton John, but by using the sounds from the Juno project, so we had all these Jupiter noises,” says LBT’s Karen Fairchild. “We were like, ‘What if we did the a capella version of ‘Rocket Man’ on the Elton record?’ Frank Liddell [producer] loved that idea, and we were off to the races.”

Their version of the song was obviously a hit with the ACM crowd, they received a standing ovation by the conclusion of the song.

Little Big Town had three nominations going into this year’s ACM Awards including Single of the Year, Album of the Year and Vocal Group of the Year.