Wynonna Showcases Her Songwriting Talents, Shares Her ‘Hard Truth’ on New Album: ‘I Turned My Pain Into Purpose’

“This record is the most painful thing I’ve ever done and the most exhilarating thing I’ve ever done,” Country Music Hall of Famer Wynonna, 62, says of her new album. The Hard Truth, her first project of new music in a decade, out Friday (Oct. 2), on ANTI-.

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The 10-track album includes some of the singer’s first-ever co-writing sessions — and is her first album of new music since the passing of her mother and her musical partner in The Judds, Naomi Judd. The album in part centers around Wynonna’s emotional journey after Naomi died by suicide at age 76 on April 30, 2022, just one day before The Judds were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

“My mom’s gone and that whole thing is just — I still go through denial sometimes. I just can’t believe it happened. It’s not supposed to end this way,” Wynonna says, adding, “I feel like I’m riding a roller coaster and I just went with it. I just couldn’t imagine my life without mom. And when she left, I was so lost and so broken. I had a hard time catching my breath. And yet I showed up the next day to the Hall of Fame and got inducted. And I thought about my mom, that’s the way she raised us. I turned my pain into purpose.”

Wynonna crafted the new album with her husband, producer/musician/songwriter Cactus Moser, working together in a studio on their Franklin, Tennessee-area farm. 

“Everything,” which features Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood, takes an unflinching look at the heavy costs of being thrust into the spotlight as a teen. Wynonna was 19 when The Judds burst onto the music scene in the 1980s, earning 14 No. 1s on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart in the span of a decade and winning five Grammys. 

Onstage, Wynonna’s commanding vocals and fierce stage presence were a potent counterpoint to Naomi’s effervescent, outgoing persona. However, offstage, mother and daughter often clashed, even as Wynonna was developing her own identity as an artist in the process.

“When I was 17, they sent me to media school and tried really hard to teach me how to be famous, and it was quite the journey. I never was the extrovert that mother is and I just don’t remember ever wanting to do anything but play guitar and sing. So the struggle was showing up on time, knowing the answer to the questions. My outfit had to match my mother’s — or else. I just remember struggling, because I wasn’t prepared and had no idea how to even balance a checkbook, barely. I just went into fame mode and it was everything, all at once.

“It was like drinking from a fire hose,” she continues. “I don’t remember a lot of what happened, because I was so traumatized, yet I knew I had a gift. So I showed up, and that’s what I’ve been doing for 43 years.”

Elsewhere on the new album, the song “Drive” touches on intergenerational dynamics, centering on Wynonna driving to visit her daughter Grace Kelley, 30, during a jail sentence. Kelley is currently serving a 15-month sentence in a Virginia jail after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor charge of driving with a suspended or revoked license, following an October 2025 arrest.

“The painful, mother-heart stuff came out. It’s pretty vulnerable,” Wynonna says.  “I’ve learned that I’m a codependent and I’m a great enabler, at the time — until I decided to say no. I’ve learned that letting go is sometimes absolutely, 100% necessary. No more money, no more anything, seek help. You’ve got to do this on your own. She’s 30 years old, she’s an adult. She has to stop blaming me. I did the same thing with my mother — I blamed her until I got to a certain age, and then it was like, ‘Okay, time’s up. That’s enough.’ So I’m hoping to break the cycle.”

The album touches on other twists and turns that have marked Wynonna’s life, including finding out at age 30 that Michael Ciminella, the man she believed was her father, was not her biological father. Wynonna’s biological father, Charles Jordan, died in 2000, before Wynonna had the chance to meet him.  “The Girl Who Could Sing” explores the unresolved questions and pain that come from never getting to know her biological father. “Did my voice and my backbone both come from you?” she ponders in the song.

“I didn’t meet my Daddy, I never knew him,” Wynonna says. “They found him a week after he died in his house on his couch, and I guess upon looking in another part of his house, there was a desk drawer that had newspaper article clippings [of Wynonna] in it. That idea just started the song. When I did the vocals for it, it took me a minute, because we wanted it to be raw and real.”

To help her craft the intensely vulnerable project, Wynonna relied on a tight-knit musical community, working with The War and Treaty on “The Hopeful Lie” and Iron & Wine on “Hear Me Now.” Vocal group The Isaacs, who sang at Naomi’s memorial, provide harmonies on “Kentucky Queen,” which feels reminiscent to Wynonna’s early music as part of The Judds.

“I wanted real colorful characters on this record, people that I bonded with, and those are the people we chose to bring their gifts to the situation,” Wynonna says. “The Isaacs are unlike any group I’ve ever heard. The War and Treaty, their harmonies are spectacular. It was really important to us to have this community and it worked.”

Wynonna recalls another artist in the country music community who was also a source of courage and strength in the weeks following Naomi’s passing.

“She came to Mom’s memorial,” Wynonna recalls of Dolly Parton, who died Aug. 25 at age 80. “She showed up to speak and I was blown away, because you remember who’s there. She came into the dressing room, shut the door, and said, ‘How are you doing?’ I told her — and I cried, of course — and she just hugged me and said, ‘I love you very much.’ She looked right into my eyes and I looked into her eyes and told her I loved her, too. I feel like she’s family. I’ve lost a family member. I met her when I was 17 years old, and she hugged me then. I adore that woman.”

Wynonna is also raising her four-year-old granddaughter Kaliyah, Grace’s daughter, and says she’s working to instill lessons in her granddaughter that she’s learned along the way. “She’s a princess-cowgirl who has grit,” Wynonna says. “She’s always on a horse or dancing or doing gymnastics. I’ve learned to teach my granddaughter, ‘To thine own self be true.’ I tell her that every single day. And I’m teaching her how to say no, and I wish I had said that a lot more in my past.”

Though the album is filled with songs distilling her journey of love, loss and pain, Wynonna is focused on the present and finding joy in the everyday moments.

‘I’m trying to keep it together and raise this baby [Kaliyah] and show up for my daughter if I can. I think about heaven a lot. I think about the joy that’s coming and I don’t fret about stuff like I used to. I used to lay down in bed and feel hopeless. Now, I go play with Kaliyah. I try to stay in my community, or I go cook a meal, or take a walk with Cactus to the studio and make a record.”

With this record, Wynonna says her aim is straightforward. 

“I hope I can help someone out there to get help. Telling my story, hopefully, will give someone else permission to seek their own healing. If I’ve done that, I’ve done my job.”