Ashley Cooke Gets Honest About Life, Love & Lessons On Self-Titled Sophomore Album [Interview]

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Ashley Cooke. Photo: Patrick Tracy

Ashley Cooke is letting fans in deeper than ever before on her sophomore self-titled album, out today (Aug. 14) via Big Loud Records/Back Blocks Music.

Written in the midst of a season of falling in and out of love, the self-described coming-of-age record finds Cooke putting words to the patterns, fears and hard truths she was still learning about herself in real time.

“I learned quite a bit about myself throughout the process of writing it,” Cooke shares with MusicRow. “Just being in your mid-to-late 20s, you learn about yourself and your patterns, relationships, and your biggest fears. [I didn’t want to just say] ‘I went through this thing and here’s what I think,’ but it is more of ‘here is what I learned in the process.’”

Cooke co-wrote all 15 tracks on the project alongside Music Row hitmakers including Kyle Sturrock, Emily Weisband, Chase McGill, Seth Ennis and more, but the project came together much differently than her debut shot in the dark.

“I didn’t walk into writing rooms on Music Row with a hook in mind thinking about how to blow The Listening Room’s mind or how to blow the Bluebird’s mind,” she explains. “I sat down with some of my closest friends and favorite co-writers. A lot of this record was written on retreats, or in my living room, or on bus runs when I was on tour.”

That less-calculated approach also meant writing while life was actively unfolding around her. Cooke began making the album in a relationship that ended before it was finished, writing much of the record “smack dab in the middle” of its ups and downs.

Track one is appropriately titled “if i’m being honest,” born from Cooke and two co-writers “word vomiting” random thoughts and hard truths, or the kind of things that she jokes might come out after “too much wine on a first date.”

“That was important for me to kind of get out,” she says of opening the record with those honest admissions.

From there, the record follows the ebbs and flows of the relationship Cooke found herself in while making it, with songs capturing different moments as it unfolded. “between the lines” traces back to the beginning stages of the relationship. After writing the first verse on her own, she brought it to three of Nashville’s most celebrated songwriters, Lori McKenna, Hillary Lindsey and Liz Rose.

Ashley Cooke. Photo: Patrick Tracy

“I love them all so much. Obviously, they’re iconic writers,” Cooke gushes. “We were sitting at Liz’s house, and we were just messing with random ideas and titles. I was like, ‘I have this idea called ‘between the lines.’ I don’t really know what it would be yet, but I wrote this verse for it.’”

Together, the four built the song around everything left unsaid in those early stages of a relationship, playing what Cooke says aloud against what she really means.

By the time she wrote album closer “the girl who cried wolf,” she had reached a much different place. The song was never supposed to be on the record at all, but when she thought the project was finished and headed to mastering, the relationship came to an end.

“We basically called it off, and I was in my head and spiraling and talking to my friends about it,” Cooke recalls. “I went into a writing room, and I wrote about it. I called the label the next day and I was like, ‘We have to put this on the record.’”

What began as simply writing through the breakup ultimately became the record’s final track, bringing the album full circle to the patterns she was beginning to recognize in herself.

“I feel the most when I listen to that song,” she shares. “I was never planning on writing that for the record. It was just writing to write, to have therapy of it. And now it’s the last song on a project that I’m super proud of.”

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Elsewhere on the album, current single “baby blues” came together under much lighter circumstances. Cooke penned the track on the final day of a writing retreat with Seth Ennis, Johnny Clawson, Joe Fox and Kyle Sturrock after a few days of admittedly having a little too much fun.

“We were all very hungover from drinking the night before,” Cooke laughs. “We were just having a good time on our retreat. That song kind of just fell out of us during that time period, and it wasn’t intentional.”

The idea was sparked when Ennis mentioned a line for another song, prompting the group to realize there was another idea to chase. Cooke immediately connected with what they wrote, but listeners soon had a say in the song’s trajectory too. After she shared the demo on social media, “baby blues” began gaining traction and eventually made its way into her live set.

“It just kind of became this organic moment, similar to how ‘your place’ also happened,” she says. “I think it’s fun to have people champion songs that they want to hear on the radio.”

Ashley Cooke. Photo: Patrick Tracy

The song is climbing the country charts and has amassed 55 million global streams to date.

Cooke is celebrating the album release with the “cities that made me tour,” a special run of acoustic pop-up shows, kicking off today in Nashville. Tomorrow (Aug. 15), the tour will continue on to Milwaukee, Cooke’s birthplace, before visiting Pleasanton and Studio City, representing Cooke’s youth in California, then Sarasota and Parkland from later stints in Florida. The shows wrap by going all the way back to West Lafayette, Indiana, where her parents first met.

The celebration is just a preview of what Cooke has planned for the album on the road. She will launch her third headlining run, the “Baby Blues World Tour” next month, bringing the new music to cities across the U.S. and U.K., including a Feb. 25 stop at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. Leaning into the tour’s namesake, Cooke is asking fans to come dressed in baby blue, creating what she calls a “blue out.”

For all the new music, shows and celebrations surrounding the project, Cooke believes what comes through most is a clearer picture of the person behind it.

“I’ve established myself as a brand in the industry, but this record really allows you to get to know Ashley the person, not Ashley the artist.”

Lauryn Sink
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