Ashley Monroe has announced the upcoming release of her fourth album. The Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter will release Sparrow on April 20.
The album’s themes emerged as she was working through a lot of childhood trauma that derived from her father’s death and its aftermath. Monroe and her mother struggled to find their new roles together but without him, and she says those old emotions began to surface when she was writing the new songs.
“I was unpacking a lot of stuff,” Monroe states in a press release. “I was singing, and identifying what it’s like to be left. No one told me what I should do, back then, when the world started to crumble.”
She wrote many of the songs for Sparrow while she was pregnant with her first child, and she says it impacted the way she encountered the music.
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“I felt powerful,” she says. “I wasn’t puffing, I wasn’t drinking wine, I was just singing.”
Monroe worked with celebrated producer Dave Cobb at the historic RCA Studio A. Cobb’s credits include Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson and more.
“I knew I wanted to work with Dave,” she says. “All of his records are consistently awesome and classic, timeless, old and new all in one.”
They shared diverse musical influences to create the album’s unique sound, including early Elton John and Glen Campbell‘s “Wichita Lineman.” The result is unlike anything Monroe had previously recorded.
“Country music is a wide genre, and that’s OK,” Monroe says. “I don’t even know what genre this record is, but I know it’s me.”
Monroe has also announced the first single from the record, “Hands on You.” The song is available for streaming on various digital platforms, and she has also filmed a newly released video for the sultry track.
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This Article Was Originally Posted at www.TasteofCountry.com
