Music icon Wynonna knows that pain threaded with joy is the sound of survival. On her new album The Hard Truth – coming out on October 2 and her first studio album for ANTI- Records – she isn’t letting go of either one, carrying everything she’s endured and reinventing herself as an artist.
Wynonna has shared ‘Am I Missing Out’ the second single from her upcoming album The Hard Truth.
The lilting surprise of the Bacharach-inflected ‘Am I Missing Out’ is sung from the perspective of a young Wynonna realising some essential part of herself was eclipsed in a world where she had to grow up overnight. The warm sonic palette that recalls early ’70s production reveals the sophistication of these arrangements behind the voice they’re built to frame.
Wynonna – ‘Am I Missing Out’
Praise for Wynonna
“One of country music’s most venerated singers”— The New York Times
“A legend of legends” — NPR
“The greatest female country singer since Patsy Cline” — Rolling Stone
A bass drum hammers its way onto the bridge in waltz time as a voice gathers force, becoming so guttural it transforms into a wail beyond song. “How could a headstone on Pine Hill know you / better than me?” it moans, punching out each word. “Was I ever really your daughter?”
This ten-track tribute to deep sorrow and dogged persistence strips away layer after layer of the lush production that defined Wynonna’s previous recordings, delivering in its place her most personal and powerful work yet. ANTI- is proud to continue its tradition of embracing American legends and giving them a platform to reach new heights.
The Hard Truth has a major contributor in the form of producer Cactus Moser, Wynonna’s partner in music and life. The two first became friends after meeting on her 1990 tour, when Moser’s band Highway 101 opened for her. Recalling that tour, he says, “At sound check, I’d watch her singing those songs more freely and less like the records, and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’”
Wynonna and Moser shared songwriting duties on The Hard Truth, and the resulting tracks were recorded to capture and compliment the raw power he’d witnessed decades ago. What they’ve created together is an unvarnished elegy to the dead and the missing, an album that pays tribute to choosing love in the face of suffering. Through instrumentation and arrangements unlike any record in Wynonna’s four-decade career, The Hard Truth rolls in like a night train hitting listeners on the blind side.
Wynonna
The Hard Truth
Available October 2 via Anti-
Photo Credit: Thomas Crabtree
Tracklisting
- Prelude (All Downhill From Ashland)
2. All Downhill From Ashland
3. Everything (feat. Patterson Hood)
4. Am I Missing Out
5. Broken And Blessed
6. Hear Me Now (feat. Iron & Wine)
7. The Hopeful Lie (feat. The War And Treaty)
8. Kentucky Queen
9. Girl Who Could Sing
10. Drive
11. Love Ain’t Got The Best Of Me
