New Hootie & the Blowfish music? Nah. Darius Rucker says people want to hear ‘Hold My Hand’

Hootie & the Blowfish haven’t released a new album since 2019’s Imperfect Circle, but they’re playing Stagecoach on Sunday, followed by several major festivals this summer. And last week in Nashville, singer Darius Rucker told reporters they don’t have much motivation to put out new music if they can sell out shows without it. Besides, he said, nobody’s interested in hearing it.

“I’m mean, we’re lucky,” he told reporters. “We’re at that point in our careers where we don’t have to put out a record. And we can decide to tour next summer, and we’re gonna sell out arenas and the sheds. Every artist in the world, when they’re 16, 17, 19, 20, playing in clubs, that’s where they wanna be at the end.”

“They don’t know it, they think, ‘We wanna have hits our whole career,’ and nobody does that,” Darius continued. “You know, you wanna be at a point where you don’t have to have hits, you can still go and play to 15,000 people. And we’re lucky enough to be there.”

“So it’s like, if we make music, great, but ain’t nobody listening to that s*** anyway,” he laughed. “You know, people want to hear ‘Hold My Hand.’ They want to hear ‘Only Wanna Be With You.’ So that’s what we’re gonna play.”

Despite the lack of new music, the band recently hit #1 — on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart. The song that did it for them was “Bottle Rockets,” by country star and former American Idol champ Scotty McCreery. It contains an interpolation of “Hold My Hand,” so Hootie & the Blowfish joined him on the track.

Hootie & the Blowfish will play the Bourbon & Beyond, Oceans Calling and Windy City Smokeout festivals. Meanwhile, Darius has a solo tour, Songs of Summer, starting June 4.