Never Will
Ashley McBryde- Hang In There Girl
- One Night Standards
- Shut Up Sheila
- First Thing I Reach For
- Voodoo Doll
- Sparrow
- Martha Divine
- Velvet Red
- Stone
- Never Will
- Styrofoam
Reigning ACM New Female Artist, CMA New Artist of the Year and 3x GRAMMY nominee Ashley McBryde releases follow-up Never Will today, Friday, April 3 on Warner Music Nashville.
Rolling Stone and NPR each named McBryde’s sophomore album as one of the most anticipated projects of 2020. With the release of “Martha Divine” earlier this year, NPR stated, “Mark It Down: Ashley McBryde Is In For A Massive Year,” conveying high expectations for Never Will.
“Even though you try to avoid pressure, you can’t because your second record has to prove that your first record was not a fluke,” McBryde says. “But if we thought too hard, we would have neutered ourselves and not taken some of the chances we wanted to take.”
Associated Press observes Never Will “doubles down on the rock and bluegrass influences on songs like ‘Voodoo Doll,’ in which she turns her powerful vocals to 11 while merging mandolin licks with electric guitar solos. And in a song that would make Patty Loveless proud, she does an acoustic bluegrass turn on ‘Velvet Red’ as her voice warbles with that high lonesome twang.”
The Tennessean remarks the Jay Joyce produced tracks are “filled with potent, personal storytelling as McBryde wrestles with grief, uncertainty, loneliness, rage jealousy and passion,” while American Songwriter notes McBryde “ramps up the volume after her successful 2018 debut, cranking out a rock/country hybrid that’s more visceral than, well, country/rock, and hits harder too,” and praises McBryde as an “empowered woman whose rootsy music balances gutsy rocking with classic country, folk and even slight bluegrass influences.”
“We have a tendency to be a rock band,” McBryde says. “If we’re going to have those rock tendencies in our sound, let’s don’t just do it a little bit. Dig into that, like you do in therapy. Let’s find out why we do that, and let’s do it on purpose.
“At first, I thought, I don’t know if all these songs go together,” she continued. “Then, when we laid them all down, I saw, oh yeah. They do. It’s called range. You’re a complete person. You don’t just make a rock record. You don’t just make a country record. You make your record.”