Lauren Alaina and Kane Brown have reunited on a brand-new duet, “Never Been In Love,” released on Friday, July 17, nearly a decade after their breakout collaboration made country music history.
The new track appears on Alaina’s upcoming album, Stages, and marks the first time the two artists have recorded together since their 2017 smash “What Ifs.” That gap makes the reunion significant for fans who have long hoped the pair would find their way back into the studio together. The song draws directly from Alaina’s personal life — she described it as a reflection of the love she shares with her husband, Cam Arnold, suggesting that real love revealed how hollow her past relationships had been by comparison.
Roots in a Georgia Choir Room
Brown and Alaina’s connection stretches back long before either had a record deal. Both grew up in northwest Georgia and attended Lakeview Fort Oglethorpe High School, where they shared a choir class. Brown has credited Alaina with giving him the nudge that changed his trajectory as an artist — she encouraged him to stop humming quietly and actually sing out loud. That moment of encouragement helped set him on a path toward a professional music career. Alaina, meanwhile, went on to finish as the runner-up on American Idol in 2011, while Brown built his early following through social media in the years that followed. Despite their diverging paths, the friendship held.
The Weight of “What Ifs”
When Brown assembled his self-titled debut album, Alaina was his first call for a duet. The result, “What Ifs,” released in 2017, became one of the defining country songs of its era. It reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs, Country Airplay, and Country Streaming Songs charts, delivering Brown his first chart-topper and making him the first artist in Billboard history to simultaneously hold No. 1 positions across all five of the publication’s major country charts. The song has since earned Diamond certification from the RIAA — a distinction shared by only 13 country songs, each representing more than 10 million units moved. The pair also took home the CMT Music Award for Collaborative Video of the Year in 2018.
Ahead of the release, Alaina shared a video of herself rehearsing the song’s introduction, saying: “I’m so thankful for this song. It really represents this stage of life that I’m in and that when you fall in love for real, you realize you never really loved [bleeped out name] and you know, so — that’s so mean but I didn’t love him, did I?”
With Stages on the horizon and “Never Been In Love” now out in the world, listeners will be watching closely to see whether Brown and Alaina’s chemistry — forged in a Georgia high school and proven on one of country’s biggest-ever duets — translates just as powerfully the second time around.
