Veteran singer-songwriter Ashley Monroe has had a long, checkered run in the Nashville country music business. She’s had a lot of success, partly as one third of Miranda Lambert’s great side project Pistol Annies, but she’s also bounced around from label to label, making her own deep and heartfelt music while singing backup on records from artists who don’t have her level of gravitas. Now, Monroe has poured her feelings about the country music industry into a new concept album called Dear Nashville.
Dear Nashville follows 2025’s Tennessee Lightning, and it’s out today without any advance notice. Monroe co-wrote and co-produced the new album with fellow country veteran Luke Laird, and the whole process came out of their experience writing the self-explanatory opening track “I Hate Nashville”: “I hate Nashville and its stupid neon lights/ You give and break, and it just takes the best years of your life.”
Dear Nashville is a short and remarkably pretty record, and it feels way more majestic than the venting session that I probably just described. It’s hard to walk the line between talking about loving country music and about hating the business machine behind it. On first listen, I think Monroe pulls it off here. Listen below.
Dear Nashville is out now on Mountainrose Sparrow.
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