Florida Georgia Line “Taking A Break” After 10 Years Together

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Country duo Florida Georgia Line confirmed in a recent interview that they are “taking a break,” but say they aren’t breaking up.

For the last decade, Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley, also known as Florida Georgia Line, have influenced country music and have been credited with pioneering the bro-country sound. Their 2012 debut single, “Cruise,” was downloaded over 7 million times, becoming the best-selling digital country song ever, until it was unseated by Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Back Road” five years later.

With hits such as “H.O.L.Y.,” “Simple,” and “Meant to Be,” the duo’s achieved unprecedented success in their brief career. In 2020, rumors began to swirl that FGL was splitting up after changes to social media pages no longer identified them as members of FGL, band members posted tributes to their time with the duo, and a tour was canceled and never rescheduled. The pair addressed the rumors publicly for the first time during an interview with PEOPLE at the opening of their Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit on Sunday (February 6).

 

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“I think ‘taking a break’ is the proper term, as opposed to breaking up,” Hubbard told PEOPLE.

“We’re not going our separate ways,” Kelley said. “We’re taking a break from recording our music. We’re being artists. We love creating. And so a couple years back, we started writing without each other and trying different writers, and now we’re both doing that with our music.”

Hubbard added that the duo will be fulfilling their schedule commitments that includes a dozen festival dates. “We’re sort of using these last 12 shows as a time to celebrate FGL, celebrate the fans, celebrate each other, and then support each other on the next chapter of our musical and creative journey, which is gonna be individually for a while. So we’re excited.”

Despite taking on projects apart from each other, both men insist that “brotherhood remains” and say that the history they have together is going to keep them close forever.

“When you live with somebody on the road and you go through everything, there’s a connection,” Kelley said. “You don’t lose that. You have history. We’ve built something that’s way bigger than us — because of our fans, because of our team. And it’ll always be.”

“We’ve created so many memories and laughs and stories that I picture being 85, sitting on a porch with BK, telling stories to our kids. And I think, even through the next chapter of us doing solo things, that brotherhood remains,” Hubbard added. “I’m genuinely so excited for BK, and vice versa…What we’ve built together allows us to have the foundation to do different things and to be able to create whatever we want to do. But that brotherhood…that’ll always be there.”