Acclaimed British singer Rumer has recorded a new album full of tracks written by Nashville Songwriters Hall of Famer Hugh Prestwood.
Nashville Tears features Rumer’s take on songs like The Song Remembers When, which was a hit for Trisha Yearwood, and Hard Times For Lovers, previously recorded by Judy Collins.
The singer admits she had never heard of Prestwood before she started work on an album inspired by the “lost gems” of Nashville after becoming a mum.
“When I had a baby in 2017, I was living in rural Arkansas, and hadn’t quite thought through how isolating that would be once the baby was born…,” she writes on her website. “As the months wore on I couldn’t imagine writing a song again. I wondered if I would ever be able to write an album.
“Hardly anyone in the music world called me during that time. It was a lonely time. I felt far out at sea as though I had drifted too far away and didn’t know how to get back. But one person kept calling me. His name was Fred Mollin… a funny Canadian producer… He called me every week, he wanted to do something with me, an album project with me. I kept putting him off because I had this small baby and I was just totally lost and couldn’t figure out how to get back into music again.”
Eventually she suggested an album of songs from the Nashville songwriting community that “didn’t get the attention they deserved”.
Mollin loved the idea and posted an ad in industry publication Music Row, which read: “Is your song the saddest song in Nashville? Is your song the song that got away?”
“We had hundreds, maybe thousands of submissions,” Rumer writes. “I listened and listened but I wasn’t feeling that we were finding what we were looking for.
“Then Fred sends me a song from his collection. A demo of Oklahoma Stray by Hugh Prestwood. I had never heard of Hugh Prestwood – but his song blew me away. Then we listened to more of his demos and cuts. I couldn’t believe I had never heard of this great songwriter. I was thrilled – it was like finding gold. The quality of his writing surpassed every other writer we had heard out of Nashville. I knew in that moment we had to make an album of Hugh Prestwood songs and to curate a beautiful collection for you all to hear.”
Nashville Tears drops on 24 April (20).
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