Wynonna Judd faces 'The Hard Truth' on vulnerable new album, the first since her mother Naomi died

NEW YORK (AP) — Wynonna Judd's first album in 10 years, “The Hard Truth,” could come with a warning — but the title works just as well.

Across 10 tracks, the country music icon bares all: There are songs about her late mother and principal musical collaborator Naomi Judd, who died by suicide in 2022 at age 76. There are songs about her estranged daughter Grace Kelley, whose 4-year-old daughter, Kaliyah, Judd is raising. There are songs for Judd's biological father, whom she never got to meet and first learned about in a therapy session when she was 30 years old and pregnant with her son Elijah.

And there are songs about hope, triumph, resiliency and success — an encapsulation of an artist who has lived a lot of lives, now completely willing to lay it all out there.

“I’m not a victim. I don’t think of myself as somebody who is defined by all of this,” Judd told The Associated Press. “It happened to me, but it doesn’t mean that I’m constantly in despair. I feel like I’ve been reborn. This album has given me a voice, literally and figuratively. And I now can give my testimony without shame.”

“The Hard Truth,” recorded at Judd's studio in Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee , with her husband and producer Cactus Moser, was born out of necessity. “When mom died, a part of me went into such a dark place. ‘What do I do now? Where do I go with all this pain? How do I process this unbelievable ending to our story?’” she asked herself. She started journaling and having conversations with Moser to process her grief.

The record, she says, “was born out of those conversations.”

“A lot of these songs wrote themselves. We were just the instrument. And it was painful and it was glorious at the same time because I felt like I was being healed of something tragic,” she said.

Those two notions — immense suffering and relief, or even success — power the record. And her life: “Mom killed herself on a Tuesday and Wednesday morning, I got up out of bed … and got inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame the very next morning,” she recalls. “But that’s the way life is sometimes. (It's) those paradox moments where you go, ‘I don’t think I can do it, but I must.’”

That speaks to why on “The Hard Truth,” Judd co-wrote 9 of the album's 10 tracks, something she's never done before in her career. “It was the first time in my life that I was giving myself permission to be that vulnerable,” she said.

And losing her mother changed everything. “I was willing to go in there and give it everything I got.”

Those familiar with the work of Judd as a soloist, or her hits in her duo with Naomi, The Judds, know her to be a big belter and a perfectionist, someone who will stop at nothing to get a flawless take. This time around, she allowed emotion to drive the project.

“This album is perfectly imperfect. It’s me talk singing, it’s me having a conversation with you,” she says. “You literally can hear the breath coming out of my lungs and you can feel the tears.” For these songs, being raw over being refined was a priority. She describes the process as liberating.

It's also why “The Hard Truth” — despite all its trials and tribulations — is imbued with a message of persistence, from the mountain stomper “Kentucky Queen” to the last track, “Love Ain’t Got the Best of Me.”

“I totally have optimism, even in the darkest times,” she says. And after everything that happens to a person in their life, she says, love is what remains.

“I’m giving permission to people to tell their story. That’s what I’m doing,” she continued. “If I can help one person heal, choose life over suicide, I’ve done my part.”

Judd describes this album as a “rebirth” and this chapter of her life as one filled with courage. So, then, what comes next? She's spent the last few years reflecting on her mother's life and their relationship — has she thought about her own legacy, too, as a result?

“I just want to be remembered,” she said, before turning focus to Dolly Parton, her longtime friend and American icon who died of cancer in August. She was 80.

“I think about Dolly every single day. I think about her all the time and the thing that comes to me is how joyful she was. Just effervescent. She just had a sparkle to her. She walked in the room and you just felt better. It was like ‘man, this person was something,’” She paused. “I just want to be remembered as being kind and loving and that if I can do it, so can you.”