Despite over three decades in the solo spotlight, it still feels like Wynonna Judd is the shadow of the Judds, the legendary, hit-making duo with her mother, the late Naomi Judd. With Naomi, Wynonna applied her prodigious talents to tasteful, lovely neo-traditional country songs, but as a solo artist, she had a broader muse. As music journalist Steve Huey wrote, “Judd demonstrated an eclecticism that increasingly confounded hardcore country fans and radio programmers.”
Her journey to solo superstardom saw her branch out into rock, blues, soul, and pop. Journalist Richard Cromelin once listed her various musical guises, writing, “Judd was a roaring, growling rocker, a jubilant gospel singer, a tender balladeer, a blues belter. If she wanted, you suspect, she could focus on any of those styles and come up with a great album.” On her latest album, The Hard Truth, the Kentucky legend leans into a rootsier take on her country-pop, treading a familiar path but with a more stripped-down slant.
“The dirt made me / It gave me a name / Kentucky Queen,” Wynonna croons coolly on the album’s first single, “Kentucky Queen”. Judd is credited as one of the songwriters on the tune, as she is on most of the tracks, a rarity, since she is mostly a song stylist or interpreter rather than a tunesmith. Her husband, Cactus Moser, joins her on nine of the ten tracks on The Hard Truth, giving the album a deeper sense of authorship than her previous works.
Despite the more acoustic, leaner production, the song is pure Wynonna—sassy, knowing, witty, and slightly eccentric. The lyrics hark back to her roots, conjuring up pastoral humble origins in her “holler”, with the younger Wynonna being formed by the rural elements of the Kentucky environment, as she professes “the dirt made me… the wind made me…the road made me… Kentucky Queen.” Like one of her flamboyant costumes, “Kentucky Queen” is festooned with a clapping banjo and strumming mandolin, country-music furbelows that play up her campy, self-aware persona.
The Hard Truth is arguably Wynonna’s strongest, most cohesive studio release in her long discography. She hasn’t released a full album in over a decade. However, in 2020 she gave listeners a taster with the rootsy EP Recollections on her new label, Anti- Records, home to veterans like Mavis Staples and Bettye LaVette. Unlike those soul legends, Wynonna’s debut for Anti- isn’t a sound reset. Instead, it’s an excellent country-pop record with a more rustic, organic sound, rather than the dense studio gloss of her early 1990s albums.
The Hard Truth doesn’t suddenly recast Wynonna as a folksy country artist; the songs keep her penchant for melodic pop hooks, but it is a great vehicle for that natural wonder of a voice. At 62, it seems age has barely touched that thick, voluptuous growl that echoes Patsy Cline‘s keening howl or Elvis Presley‘s carnal snarl.
Tragedy, hardship, and turmoil inform much of the music on The Hard Truth. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and the best thing I’ve ever done. If I never make another record again, this is it,” she shared with Music Row. Though Wynonna is known for her saucy humour, tragedy seems to frame her work, and her troubled family history, along with the very public tragedy of Naomi Judd’s death in 2022, has left its imprint on much of the album’s music. With her hand in penning most of the tunes listed, The Hard Truth is arguably her most personal work.
When she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame alongside her late mother, her sister, actress Ashley Judd, also spoke. The pain of their mother’s death still fresh and raw (she died the night before), Ashley paid tribute to the Judds, but remembered to single out her sister by saying, “While [this honour] is so much about the Judds as a duo, I want to take a moment to recognise my sister. A GOAT [“greatest of all time”].”
The honour and Ashley’s tribute encapsulate so much of how Wynonna’s career progressed. For over a decade, Wynonna performed as the Judds, scoring a series of hit singles before illness forced Naomi to retire and Wynonna had to go it alone. Though both women were gifted, Wynonna was the musical wonder. Former manager Ken Stilts told Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times, “I remember the impression Wynonna made on me that first day. I got home that night and told my wife, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve just seen the female Elvis Presley.”
That comparison to the King is easy to hear in Wynonna’s singing, but also in her showmanship. She cut a striking figure on stage. Kassidy Osborn of SHeDAISY recalled Judd’s performing style and look as “very cool and laidback”, and music journalist Jewly Hights described Wynonna’s stage persona as “a student of Elvis and Bonnie Raitt; she wore the pants and leather, copped her own version of rock’s New Romantic style, played guitar and strode on stage like she wasn’t to be messed with.”
However, alongside the striking visuals—the leather, the boots, the inimitable orange tresses—what made Wynonna stand out was her extraordinary voice. A preternaturally large and booming roar that could be bent and shaped into a stirring, wise call. John Roos likened her voice to a “hurricane”, while critic John D’Agostino suggested that after a 1992 performance at the San Diego Convention Center, her voice was “still reverberating around San Diego Bay.”
That thunderclap of a voice remains intact in the autumnal, dappled aural tones of The Hard Truth. She lets her singing tighten and narrow in the quieter moments when she muses on sadder themes. In the album’s first track, “All Downhill from Ashland” (name-checking her birth city), she speaks directly to her dead mother, mourning a history of tragedy. “Hey, hey, Mama, can you hear me now? / I’m far from heaven, but I’m screaming loud / You held the curse from your Mama’s hands / For me to wear around me like a family brand.”
She then levels a devastating charge at her mother’s feet, singing, “You couldn’t love you, so how could you love me?” alluding to the often-difficult relationship they shared. Wynonna sings these verses in an affected high, almost rusty croon, belying the lyrics’ depth with rueful regret. Instead of sounding morose, she sings gloomy verses like “Well times were simple when we would sing / It felt like prayer, and now it feels like pain,” with an almost angry resignation.
Wynonna has rarely been so frank and personal on her records. This candour comes in part from her larger role in crafting this record, and in part from the participation of Cactus Moser, best known as a founding member of the country band Highway 101. While the Judds enjoyed immense success in the mid-1980s, Moser and his bandmates also had hit songs on the country charts. Playing drums with a successful, hit-making band gave Moser the experience that made him a sympathetic collaborator for a superstar like Wynonna Judd. He co-wrote some of his band’s biggest hits, and he uses that talent with his wife, as they delve into deeper reserves of her talent.
The songs they wrote together (along with other skilled pros like fellow performers Sarah Siskind and Melissa Forrette and songwriting pro Justin Weaver, among others) tell dark stories of emotional trauma and Wynonna’s dogged determination to soldier through, despite being scathed and battered. In the bluesy rocker “Everything”, Wynonna is practically soaked in self-knowledge as she archly recounts the erratic, chaotic life she led as a public figure. “Everything is not OK,” she mordantly sings, “But I’m OK with everything… I’ll get on just fine / But there’s a cost that ‘just fine’ brings.”
Moser and Judd enjoy playing with the contradictions of being a strong woman who is still vulnerable. So, their collaboration with Siskind, “Broken & Blessed”, is especially moving. In a generally spare soundscape, we get a tight, close-up of Wynonna’s voice, restrained and held in tight, as she revels in the juxtaposition of being “broken and blessed” as she points out, “It doesn’t have to be black and white / I can lay my burdens down / And still put up a fight.”
The trio also deliver the most affecting moment on The Hard Truth, “Drive”, a wise, sad tale inspired by Wynonna’s trips to visit her incarcerated daughter in prison, with lyrics that testify to living with grief and the inevitable passage of time. “My past and future are just passengers,” she wisely notes, but then with a seeming shrug, she admits, “All I can do is drive.”
With Wynonna’s personal tragedies, the label change to Anti-, and the bracing lyrics, it’s tempting to call this album a “back to her roots” comeback record. The studio polish of her earlier work has given way to a looser sound, but this isn’t the total sonic reset one might assume. Despite the more personal nature, this is still a Wynonna record, which means she cannot shake off her oversized personality, her inherent brassiness, or her instinct to make great country-pop.
The songs may lack the shine of her big hits, but they still retain her love of a great, hooky melody. Nowhere is this more evident than on the last track, the affirmative and strutting “Love Ain’t Got the Best of Me”, which sounds like the older sibling of her classic “No One on Earth”. It’s a funky, dancing number with lively horns and the kind of “you go, girl!” anthemic tone and lyrics that made Wynonna so appealing. Despite being an extremely talented and rich superstar, she always seemed like everyone’s wise, if slightly over-the-top, girlfriend.
It’s a great way to close out an album that holds so much space for heartache and tragedy. It’s a nice reminder that even after all Wynonna has gone through—the tragedies, the setbacks, the pitfalls—she can remain funny, smart, and wise.