Wearing false eyelashes and a blonde wig of human hair value $13,000 – sure, actually – Tanner Adell seems to be each inch the “glam-country” star she calls herself. “There’s a big a part of the nation viewers that loves Shania Twain and Dolly Parton, the OG glam-country queens,” she says. And similar to these icons that got here earlier than her, this trailblazer believes that “the magic actually began taking place” when she stopped making an attempt to decide on between nation and different genres she loves.
Adell has damaged out by taking part in quick and free along with her influences. On her 2023 mixtape ‘Buckle Bunny’, she blended nation with entice beats (‘FU-150’), R&B girlband harmonies (‘Throw It Again’) and smooth Okay-pop-esque hooks (‘Strawberry Crush’). And even when she does go “straight up pop-country”, she incorporates “sounds I really like from the ‘60s and ‘70s” – take ‘Love You A Little Bit’, a timeless drivetime anthem with a Taylor Swift-worthy refrain that’s her most-streamed track so far.
“Everytime you’re making an attempt to do one thing completely different, there’s at all times going to be folks telling you it gained’t work,” Adell tells NME sanguinely. “Paving my very own path, particularly sound-wise in my music, makes it more durable, however I feel it’s going to repay in the long term.”
We start this interview in individual, proper after Adell’s photoshoot for The Cowl. Although she’s been throwing poses for hours in an East London studio, she pivots shortly to a fairly deep dialog about being a lady in nation music. “We’re pitted in opposition to one another as a result of it at all times looks like there are solely so many slots for us,” she says. “Whereas if you happen to’re a person doing nation music, there’s probability you’ll be [played] on the radio and get requested to open for an even bigger artist.”
Within the viral title monitor of ‘Buckle Bunny’, Adell deployed traditional nation storytelling to reclaim a sexist slur within the style – one geared toward ladies who supposedly ‘chase’ rodeo cowboys. “I’m on the mini-mart in a miniskirt, ’bout to steal your man in a torn up T-shirt,” she sings – earlier than making her company and autonomy clear: “Drive my very own truck, received my very own cash.”
Like that fictional rodeo queen, Adell is a go-getter who is aware of her value. In February 2024, after Beyoncé dropped her nation singles ‘Texas Maintain ’Em’ and ‘16 Carriages’, the rising nation star posted on X: “As one of many solely Black women in [the] nation music scene, I hope Bey decides to sprinkle me with a splash of her magic for a collab.” Two months later, when Beyoncé launched her country-influenced album, ‘Cowboy Carter’, Adell’s identify was on the credit.
She options on ‘Blackbiird’, Beyoncé’s magical reimagining of the Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’, the place Adell creates gleaming harmonies with three different Black feminine nation stars: Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts and Tiera Kennedy. Beyoncé underscored this act of sisterly solidarity when she introduced out the quartet throughout her Christmas Day NFL Halftime Present.
Adell additionally provides backing vocals on the album’s psychedelic opening track, ‘Ameriican Requiem’. “I really feel like possibly it’s an indication from the universe that I’m in the appropriate place and I’m doing the appropriate issues,” she says of working with Queen Bey. “So many doorways have been opened. It’s laborious to not reap a profit once you collaborate with a legendary artist.”
“There’s at all times going to be folks telling you that doing one thing completely different gained’t work”
Because time runs out on shoot day, we decide up the dialog a number of days in a while Zoom. By now, Adell has flown to Glasgow with the C2C: Nation to Nation tour, which brings dozens of American nation stars to Europe. She’s so excited to be in Scotland that she’s handled herself to a brand new tattoo: a cute Highland cow, which she unveils to her 740,000 TikTok followers.
Although Adell says she will get “shy in social conditions”, she’s comfy drilling deep into her new single ‘Going Blonde’, a shocking stripped-back ballad from her upcoming debut album. The poignant monitor provides an extremely intimate snapshot of Adell’s life as somebody who was adopted as a child: “I’m going blonde and I’m by no means going again – yeah, blonde just like the mama I by no means had,” she sings on the refrain.
“Penning this track was a giant a part of my therapeutic course of,” she says, “I’m hoping that by sharing my story, I may also help others.” Adell, who’s biracial, was born in Kentucky, then adopted by a white couple who raised her in Manhattan Seaside, California. She has 4 adoptive siblings – all biracial too – and the household spent their summers at a country ranch in Wyoming.
She says it’s not “too simplistic” to hint her music’s fusion of trad nation and shiny pop to her two properties in very completely different states. “However I really feel like I linked extra with folks in Wyoming,” she provides. “It was the place I actually got here alive and received quite a lot of my character from.”
Adell says she’s by no means skilled any overt racism as a biracial lady in nation music, however she acknowledges she “wouldn’t be stunned if there’s been some form of remark”. Two years in the past, she posted on X: “I feel I make nation music the way in which Black folks would have made nation music in 2023 if they’d been allowed to be a part of the dialog when it began.” Immediately, she expands on this level eloquently.
“I really feel like nation music is the one style that has had a tough time progressing and evolving,” she says. “Though the banjo has its origins in Africa, Black folks weren’t essentially concerned in conversations surrounding nation music.” She cites Charley Delight, who scored 29 nation Quantity Ones between the late ’60s and early ’80s, as “one of many few Black folks” recognised as a “conventional” nation artist.
“However I do really feel like if Black folks had been extra concerned within the nation scene, we would have a totally separate nation style by this level,” Adell continues. “I feel it might have developed right into a sound similar to what I’m making now.”
“It at all times looks like there are solely so many slots for girls in nation music”
Adell is near her adoptive dad and mom, who raised her within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, higher referred to as the Mormon religion. Nonetheless, it was “a shock” for them when she left the church a number of years in the past. “They had been afraid that the business had modified me, however now they see I’m nonetheless the identical individual despite the fact that I’m now not practising.”
The truth is, she will get on higher now along with her adoptive mom than she did as a youngster. “We’d butt heads rather a lot and we couldn’t be extra reverse,” Adell remembers. “I’m into making garments and doing my hair and nails, and she or he was a school basketball coach. So there have been many occasions the place I puzzled, ‘Why did my beginning mom not need me?’”
Adell poured this unresolved longing into ‘Going Blonde’, wherein she footage her beginning mom as “flirty and lovely, however harder than nails”. Sadly, the musician’s teenage “daydreams” had been changed by a heartbreaking actuality when she realized extra about her roots. “My mother’s life wasn’t that fairly – she died of a drug overdose,” she confides. “That’s the place the dichotomy within the track comes from.”
Adell reconnected along with her organic household a number of years in the past by means of the family tree web site Ancestry.com. When she acquired a message from Donnell, a person who believed he was her half-brother, she was extremely excited. Nonetheless, the reality they uncovered was much more shocking: Donnell is definitely her full organic brother.
It’s a “lengthy story” that Adell shares with out self-pity. “My beginning mom’s husband was within the army, and whereas he was deployed [internationally], she had an affair,” she explains. When her beginning mom fell pregnant with Adell, she presumed the child was illegitimate and determined to present her up for adoption.
“Nation music is the one style that has had a tough time progressing and evolving”
Nonetheless, as a result of Adell and Donnell share a lot DNA, they know for sure that they’re “full blood” siblings with the identical mom and father. “My beginning mother will need to have been pregnant with me earlier than she had an affair,” she surmises. Sadly, she by no means received to fulfill her organic mom, however she has shaped a relationship along with her organic father, who “had somewhat rap profession and managed rappers” in Atlanta within the ’90s.
“I’m very lucky. Not everyone will get these solutions,” she says. Adell additionally believes that attending to grips along with her household tree has enriched her songwriting. “With my album, I’ve an actual story to inform and I’m lastly prepared to inform it,” she says purposefully.
She additionally derives loads of confidence from having a Beyoncé collab on her résumé – after that, nobody is off the desk. “I’d like to do one thing with a feminine rapper: I really like Saweetie, GloRilla and Megan Thee Stallion,” she says. “And I really like Chappell Roan. Possibly she’ll put me on the remix of ‘The Giver’?”
However above all, Adell needs to proceed paving her personal distinctive path. “I don’t assume there’s been a turning level in my profession but,” she says. “I’m sure this album will probably be that turning level.”
Tanner Adell’s new single ‘Going Blonde’ is out now by way of Love Renaissance.
Take heed to Tanner Adell’s unique playlist to accompany The Cowl beneath on Spotify or on Apple Music right here.
Phrases: Nick Levine
Pictures: Rachel Billings
Hair: Sheena Adae-Amoakoh
Hair Assistant: Kayla Dixon
Make-up: Paintedbyesther
Styling: Matthew + Reginald Reisman, The Solely Company
Styling Assistant: Richie DaSilva
Label: Love Renaissance
