Florida Georgia Line addressed rumors they were breaking up on Thursday, telling SiriusXM host Storme Warren they were still a team and “feeling stronger than ever.”
The speculation about a rift between duo members Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley began around the Presidential election, when Kelley was regularly posting content that suggested the pandemic and corresponding live music shutdown was a conspiracy timed to end after a winner was declared. Savvy Instagram watchers noticed that Hubbard and his wife Hayley unfollowed Kelley around this time.
In the SiriusXM interview, Hubbard, who’s been quarantining on his band bus after testing positive for Covid-19, admitted that he had unfollowed Kelley but got a kick out of the rumors of a split.
“Somebody sent me an article two days ago that me and BK were breaking up and I thought, ‘Well, that’s news to me,’” he told Warren. “I unfollowed BK for a few days while we were through this political, in the middle of this election and everything going on. I even called him and told him, I said, ‘Hey, buddy, I love you. And I love you a lot more in real life than on your stories right now. So that’s why I’m unfollowing you. Nothing personal. I still love you. You’re still my brother.’ I just didn’t want to see it every time I opened Instagram. And so it wasn’t a big deal. We’re on great terms. We’re feeling stronger than ever.”
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Hubbard also explained to Warren that, like any long-term relationship, he and Kelley have had their ups and downs over the last decade and had to figure out how to work through problems together.
“There have been hard times. It’s not all sugar-coated,” he said. “The truth is, and I think this is important to talk about, me and BK have done work. We’ve went to therapy, we’ve sat with each other and wanting to kill each other at times. But by the end of it, we were hugging it out. You know what I mean? Because we’re brothers and that’s what brothers do.”
Florida Georgia Line will get to put that work back into action in 2021, as it was announced on Monday that they signed a multi-year North American touring deal with Live Nation. Dates have yet to be announced for the engagement, but a release notes they’re hoping to be back on the road as early as summer 2021.
Kelley alluded to the tour in their interview with Warren, saying they’d actually been discussing routing the day before.
“We’re just like, well, that’s interesting we are on a phone call together right now talking about the future,” he said.
Without missing a beat, Hubbard added, “I might unfollow BK again tomorrow just to keep the media talking about it.”
Kelley was among a group of Nashville artists who called for live concerts to resume after witnessing the spontaneous (and mostly masked) street celebrations following Joe Biden’s presidential victory.