Although Thompson Square sounds like a street name, in reality it is a wife and husband duo, Keifer and Shawna Thompson, with country hits such as “Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not.” This hit spent five consecutive weeks on at #1 Country Digital Soundscan and earned two Grammy nominations. Now the band has come out with their second album, Just feels Good, on March 26.
“The first album was kind of showing what we sound like,” Shawna said to The Boot. “And this album is definitely more about who we are. We wanted it to tell our story and to write about things that are going on in our life right now — how we met and everything that we’ve been through over the past three years; there’s a lot to write about.”
Their new album’s biggest single so far is “If I Didn’t Have You,” a slower song with lyrics such as “If you didn’t love me so much, I would never make it through” which was inspired by Shawna’s father passed away. This song is more complex than most of their songs and the duo’s voices blend effortlessly throughout the chorus.
“We wrote [‘If I Didn’t Have You’] with Jason Sellers and Paul Jenkins, who we wrote ‘I Got You’ with,” Shawna said to The Boot. “We were out on the road writing and I had just lost my dad like a month before, and Paul had lost his grandfather, too. So we were talking that out and having a little bit of a therapy session, and the title kind of just fell out. Jason and Keifer started playing this cool melody and it didn’t take long to write because we had everything we wanted to say in our heads because it was so emotional and so real. We’re excited that it’s doing so well and the fans are relating to it.”
Another song on the album, “Testing the Water,” revolves around summer and is more upbeat than the other songs on Just Feels Good. While this song is more upbeat than the majority of songs on their album, the lyrics unfortunately lack the complexity and deep meaning that makes their songs a hit.
“[‘Testing the Water’ is] kind of a white girl rap,” Shawna said. “It’s probably one of my favorites on the album. It came in very last minute, and as soon as I heard it, I played it over and over in my car. Typically, that doesn’t happen with me. I know it sounds crazy since I sing for a living, but I don’t listen to a lot of music. So when I heard it and it hit me like that, I thought, ‘We have to cut this.’ I took it to Kiefer and I kinda had to talk him into it, because I don’t think he thought I could really pull it off. ”
Along with writing and performing together, the pair also makes family a priority by buying a house down in Alabama so they could be closer to their family.
“Being married gives the songs that we sing a certain power,” Keifer said. “It’s not everybody who can sing to one another with that kind of intensity as two people who are in love and have such a long history like Shawna and I do. I think that comes across to the audience as being genuine, and the songs that are on the album that we had a hand in writing, especially, just feel so personal and close to our hearts. It’s really therapeutic for us to be able to go out on stage and sing them each night. It’s kind of like reliving the emotions and remembering where we came from and realizing how great of a life we have now together. There’s a certain powerfulness of that that we’re thankful for having.”