Photo: NBC
Ashley McBryde powerfully took the stage on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday night (April 22).
McBryde, 42, performed “What If We Don’t,” a single that appears on her upcoming fifth studio record. McBryde released the anthem earlier this year as she paved the way for Wild. The Grammy-winning artist has also delivered “Rattlesnake Preacher,” “Arkansas Mud” and “Bottle Tells Me So” as she builds anticipation for the project that’s due to arrive in a few weeks. Wild will follow McBryde’s Girl Going Nowhere (2018) Never Will (2020), Lindeville (2022) and The Devil I Know (2023). The country star’s newest project is slated to release on Friday, May 8.
“‘What If We Don’t’ came to me, Terri Jo Box and Randall Clay sitting around a fire pit on a back porch, reminiscing on all the moments that we could’ve made a different choice and wondering if we should’ve,” McBryde said in a statement when she released “What If We Don’t.” “It’s about the leaps of faith that you do or don’t take, and having to learn to live with those consequences either way.”
Wild will uncover “the deepest layers of her lived experience…raw and unvarnished like never before,” states a previously-issued press release about McBryde’s John Osborne-produced album, which she recorded with her live band.
“When people hear this record, I hope it wakes up the part of them that I’m singing about in ‘Wild’—the part that still believes in those unrealized dreams and untaken risks,” McBryde said in a statement when she announced the album last month. “I believe that wild little kid is still alive inside of all of us, and that’s the version of everyone that I want to sing to.
“There are so many reasons ‘Wild’ became the title of this album,” McBryde said. “It really captures the attitude of everything we made. I built this record with my band, and some of the coolest, most brilliant minds I’ve ever encountered. And that is something I will be forever grateful for. I can’t wait to share it with all of you on May 8.”