This is why she’s one of the absolute best in the business. This week, Ashley McBryde announced her fifth studio album, Wild, is set to be released on Friday, May 8th. In a post on Instagram, she shared the album cover, in addition to explaining how it came to be and some of the process of putting the record together:
“Sometimes going with your gut is the scariest thing you can do… and the most necessary. This record felt like building a tree fort from some pieces we’d been needing to put to good use and some building materials I had to go scout out and look for.
And piece by piece, trusting it would all hold together in the end. I’m so ready for y’all to hear it. Wild is the name. That’s the spirit of the record. The fear, the chaos, the hard truths, and the little kid in me who always kept dreaming big. ‘Wild’ is out May 8. I can’t wait for you to hear more of the story.”
And today, Ashley released another song from the tracklist called “Bottle Tells Me So,” which she wrote with Shelly Fairchild and Terri Jo Box.
Over the years, she’s been incredibly transparent with her struggle with alcohol addiction and her decision to get sober, and she’s put it into songs before with songs like “The Devil I Know” and “Blackout Betty,” but this one is the most raw and real yet.
She starts out by admitting that, while she doesn’t remember any of it, she knows she’s done a lot wrong because “the bottle tells me so,” a play on the line “the Bible tells me so,” I would imagine:
“From the taste of things
It must have been Marlboro Reds
From the shape I’m in
Must have barely made it to the bed
That wasn’t a good time poured over ice and sip it slow
For the bottle tells me so
If I can find my phone
I bet I need to apologize
The only problem is I can’t remember to who or why
Whatever day it is is going to be a long one, I know
For the bottle tells me so”
It ends with her acknowledging that “neither one of us got this empty on our own,”
“Neither one of us got this empty on our own
For the bottle tells me so
The bottle tells me so”
McBryde is a special artist in that she’s never afraid to go all the way there and show her battle scars, and she’s built a career on that kind of authenticity. She got sober in June of 2022, and she says she’s learned to listen to her “inner critic” rather than turn it off with drinking. She finally learned how to “do it scared,” without alcohol, and it changed her life:
“When I was drinking, it was much easier to turn off my inner critic as I was creating. But over time I learned I needed to acknowledge that voice, tell her she’s no fun to work with, and then try to tap into the younger version of me—the one who couldn’t handle all the things she left behind in Arkansas, and who ended up drinking to soothe herself. I had to tell her, ‘Okay, the alcohol’s gone and you’re scared—so, do it scared. You’ve been through worse, and you made it out all right.’”
“Bottle Tells Me So” is accompanied by a video today that was directed by Brandon Campbell, which picks up where the music video for “Arkansas Mud” leaves off, as Ashley wakes up in her makeup in a hotel room, trying to piece the night before back together following a night of getting black out drunk.
So far, she’s also released “Arkansas Mud,” “Rattlesnake Preacher” and her current single at country radio, “What If We Don’t,” though “Bottle Tells Me So” is the most powerful yet:
“Bottle Tells Me So”
You can hear Ashley talk about the record in the album trailer here:
