Lori McKenna Previews New Album With Moving Ballad ‘When You’re My Age’
Lori McKenna returns July 24th with The Balladeer, the follow-up to her Americana award-nominated album The Tree. The new project reunites her with producer Dave Cobb, who recorded the album at Nashville’s RCA Studio A.
“When You’re My Age,” the poignant first single to be issued from The Balladeer, is a intensely moving piano ballad featuring McKenna’s Love Junkie’s collaborators Hillary Lindsey and Liz Rose on backing vocals. The song is a pre-Mother’s Day love letter to McKenna’s five children as they face the future as well a timely reminder for all of us that one day youth and challenging times will be a distant memory while a mother’s love — and her place in your life — will remain.
“You’ll outgrow your shoes, you’ll outgrow your bed,” McKenna sings. “You’ll outgrow this house, just don’t forget when you’re all grown up but you don’t feel that way, you’re still gonna be my baby.”
The new song will take on more special significance for McKenna, who is the mother of a high school senior as “When You’re My Age” will be included in free online “Virtual Commencement” programs throughout the spring and into summer. Josten’s, providers of class rings and other graduation-related products, designed the programs to help high schools and colleges celebrate their Class of 2020 graduates whose many ceremonies and other events have been sidelined by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lion’s share of new tunes on The Balladeer were written solo by the McKenna, while three tracks were penned with Lindsey and Rose, with whom she also co-wrote Little Big Town‘s “Girl Crush.” That country quartet’s Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Schlapman join McKenna on the LP’s opening track, “This Town Is a Woman.”
The Balladeer will be available from CN Records/Thirty Tigers on July 24th.
The Balladeer track listing:
- “This Town Is a Woman” (ft. Karen Fairchild and Kimberly Schlapman)
- “The Balladeer”
- “Marie”
- “The Dream”
- “Uphill”
- “Good Fight”
- “Stuck in High School”
- “When You’re My Age” (ft. Hillary Lindsey and Liz Rose)
- “Two Birds”
- “ʼTill You’re Grown”