‘Still Fighting’: Shelby Lynne Marks Her Return to Nashville With Powerfully Honest New Album

Don’t call it a comeback, but in a way, it is one.

Not to the music business, though. Shelby Lynne never left it. She’s been plugging away as a journeywoman singer and songwriter for decades. But about two years ago, she made the same kind of change that had propelled her once before. She moved back to Nashville.

When she left the city nearly 30 years ago, headed for California with just an envelope of all the cash she had left to her name, she’d needed a shakeup. “I had left Nashville because I was frustrated with having made five albums that were just kinda layin’ there like a snake,” Lynne says. “I knew I had to move the energy in order to get something done. I think that’s true in life: If you’re in a rut, you gotta do something to move and swirl the energy around.”

That move away from Nashville yielded her most celebrated work, I Am Shelby Lynne, a masterpiece that turned 25 last year. It came like a freight train, an announcement of the self. And though many already knew her name, hearing it felt like meeting the artist, Shelby Lynne, for the first time. “I feel like there’s just before you listen to that record and there’s after you listen to that record,” the artist and recent Lynne collaborator Ashley Monroe says. “It’s just a life-changing thing.”

I Am signaled a shift for Lynne, one brought about by producer Bill Bottrell, known at the time for his work on Sheryl Crow’s Tuesday Night Music Club. Lynne felt empowered to write her own stuff for the first time, something she hadn’t really been encouraged to do when she was making country records in Music City. Songs like the sultry “Thought It Would Be Easier” and the soulful “Gotta Get Back” poured out of her and captured the ears of a slew of new fans and admirers.

“Thirteen years and six albums to get here,” Shelby Lynne said in her acceptance speech at the 2001 Grammy Awards for the coveted Best New Artist award on the heels of the album.

Now, with nearly 40 years in music and 20 albums — including her latest, Consequences of the Crown, out Friday on Monument Records — under her belt, who is Shelby Lynne?

“Oh lord. I think she’s a more evolved version of that girl. A lotta changes in 25 years,” she says. “I think that I’m the same, just more grown up. I try to take everything that I’ve learned and still be the honest, kinda outspoken person that I am. And I’m just glad I made it this long.”

Accidents and Truths

The truth is, even though Lynne left Nashville, it never really left her. When word of her return started to get out, so too did the desire to work with her. That was something of a shock to Lynne, who had assumed she’d quietly settle in and do some writing under the radar. She hadn’t planned on being so warmly welcomed, on being missed. But one thing led to another, and soon her longtime friend and former bandmate Waylon Payne was introducing her to Monroe, who then brought in a rotating roster of co-writers including Miranda Lambert, Carter Faith, Jedd Hughes, and eventually, Little Big Town’s Karen Fairchild.

“I think it’s good for Shelby to realize that you say her name to anybody in Nashville and their eyes light up. I think it’s good for her to see that she is respected,” Monroe says. “I just don’t want her to ever feel like anybody has — not given up on her, but I just don’t want her to ever feel like her art doesn’t matter. Because it’s huge to me and to a lot of people, so I always felt like it was my job to help lift her up and feel how loved she is. Sometimes you’d forget for a second and then she would break into some sort of lick, stand up, and go down on her knees singing, and it’s like, oh my god, it’s Shelby Lynne.”

Ashley Monroe (photo by Kirsten Balani)

Monroe took the matchmaking opportunity seriously, thoughtfully curating the folks she invited in. “I’ve loved kind of putting people together all my life. It’s a thing I like to do, ‘If this person got with this person, imagine what could happen,’” Monroe says. “When I started writing with Shelby … I wanted people who realized who they were gonna be writing with.”

At first, Lynne saw the pair-ups as a way to write songs for others. But her collaborators had other ideas.

“I had never really written in the Nashville community before. I had dabbled in it a little bit on my fourth record and my fifth record, but never really hunkered down to write songs for other people. So that’s what I was doing, and then all of a sudden Karen is like, ‘No, we need to have a record from you,’” Lynne says. “There’s nothing like communing with fellow songwriters and coming up with something at the end of the day you didn’t have, that you’re proud of.”

In some ways, the Nashville Lynne left looks nothing like the one she returned to. “I wasn’t really invited to write in ‘the club’ and I don’t think I had much interest in it,” she says of her earlier years in town. “At that point I just wanted to make it and be a singer and I wasn’t really getting carried away with all that. I didn’t really know that I could write until the I Am record. And these girls kinda just picked me up out of my own darkness and said, ‘We’re gonna make a record.’”

Her “girls,” as she lovingly refers to them, are Monroe, Fairchild, and Gena Johnson, all of whom joined Lynne in producing Consequences of the Crown and helped foster the kind of free-flowing atmosphere in which Lynne could feel totally safe to express herself. “When I say I get live on the mic, I mean it. We never know what’s gonna happen, including me,” Lynne says. “A lot of the vocals are live on the mic and a lot of accidents and a lot of truths.”

Monroe recalls it the same. “She doesn’t like going in the booth and she doesn’t like wearing headphones. She likes to get it out in a pass or two. And that was cool to see. It was just so raw and vulnerable. At times it was hard, at times it was so emotional. It was quite a journey, but it was a testament to how we’re all leaning in and lifting somebody up, rallying for them and letting them be them,” she says. “Oooh, she’s a wildfire, that woman! But it’s cool, you never have to wonder what she’s thinking or what she’s feeling.”

Writing the Pain

Consequences of the Crown is a deeply felt collection of songs rooted in heartbreak and the stumbles that come with new beginnings. Amid the joy of finally living in the same city as her beloved “sissy,” Allison Moorer, Lynne found herself enduring a breakup that gutted her and threw her off her axis. Some days she found it hard to show up for herself and credits her co-writers for pushing her out of her comfort zone to channel the rollercoaster of emotions she was experiencing.

The spontaneity of their sessions ignited something in Lynne. She suddenly felt a sense of belonging, of being understood and seen. The women let each other try new things — samples, beats, spoken-word poems — creating a kind of safety net for Lynne to express herself honestly.

Her vocals have a woozy vulnerability on standout songs like “Gone to Bed” and “Clouds,” both which find her burned out from repeating the same destructive cycles even when she knows better. “Butterfly” is a dreamy tribute to Moorer featuring their two voices in a kind of airy dance. “Good Morning Mountain” could be a B-side from I Am with its bluesy sensuality. And “But I Ain’t” makes clever use of a sample of one of I Am’s most iconic tracks, “Dreamsome” with a call and response, a happy accident that happened — like all of Consequences — on the spot in the studio.

You threw me out with pink flowers and the trash (did you miss me?)
Rid yourself of obstacles and lit the match (did you miss me?)
Wish I could wake up and tell you I’m better without you (did you miss me?)
But today’s not the day (did you miss me?)
Wish I could be telling the truth when I tell you I’m okay (did you miss me?)
But I ain’t

“It’s not a record that’s supposed to be about fancy pickin’. It’s a record about having your heart beaten to death and completely fuckin’ … ,” Lynne trails off, lost in the memory of the pain. “I don’t know if I can honestly say that great art doesn’t come out of just devastating [pain]. It does for me. You get to the other side and you can have friends that help you and next thing you know you’re at your worst and that’s kinda how it happened. But I have to write my pain. I have to write it and sing it. … I’m very lucky as a musician, I get to put my pain on the record. I can’t really talk to you about what’s going on, but maybe if I write it in a song … .”

Consequences is also a reminder of the ways Lynne was a pioneer of the genre shape-shifting that’s become commonplace in roots music today. I Am found her taking a giant leap away from the country sound she’d been known for, opting instead to explore all the other parts of herself and the natural textures of her voice, tapping into elements of R&B and pop, soul and blues. Long before Taylor Swift changed course to make pop records, Lynne had already done it, fearlessly.

“I don’t think about genre at all and I never have,” she says. “If something’s going on, I like to do the opposite. More than anything I am moved by what stirs me, whether it’s my broken heart or a beautiful melody or a lyric that drops me into a certain thing.” Monroe cites Lynne’s love of jazz and artists like D’Angelo and Mac Miller as inspiration for the sonics of Consequences.

Just like it has time and time again, music is saving Shelby Lynne. This latest leap, back to the city that saw her start as an artist, will no doubt be filled with hardships and rewards you’ll hear in every note of her music. As she begins this chapter in a career chock full of them, Lynne’s resilience — a signature, scrappy kind of strength — feels more undeniable than ever. She sees each of these new songs as hard-earned and well-deserved crowns she’s gathered along the way. Fittingly, the cover of the new album was photographed in a boxing ring.

“It’s about a fight and withstanding a fight. It’s about still being able to stand up after the blow and you still get up and fight again,” she says. “I just kept feeling like, it’s gotta be a fight, it’s gotta be a fight that you won. And you’re still going, still fighting.”