“Stone Me” by Margo Price has been on my list for New Music Friday for awhile now. She debuted the song back in January on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee on the episode where Sam did a segment on the state of women in country music. It also happened to be the night before I went to Nashville and seemed very prescient. I’ve been meaning to write about the song since I heard it, but for whatever reason I kept putting other songs in front of it. Now I’m finally circling back around to it. It’s an excellent song about not letting other people’s judgments bother you.

I’m still going strong with the ladies of country music in my New Music Friday posts. Today I’m talking about Katie Pruitt who released her first length album, Expectations, today. She is someone who is never going to get any mainstream country radio airplay because not only is she a woman, but she’s also queer, something she sings a lot about on this album. She spent four years writing this album while processing her sexuality, the struggles of coming out to devoutly Christian family, and her own faith. The songs are all very personal and full of a lot of very beautiful songs. Go give it a listen.

Although the title song “Expectations” is probably my favorite song on the album it’s not really representative of the sound of the rest of the album, so I’m going to talk about “Searching for the Truth”. It’s a song that rings very true to me after the last few years with the realization that the world and the people in it kind of suck in a way that I wasn’t really cognizant of before. But after most of the song is seemingly really bleak it ends on a hopeful chorus, which I appreciate and most days is where I can get myself back to. It’s at least where I aspire to be because without hope there is no way to make things change for the better.

Carly Pearce’s self titled sophomore album came out today. I adored her first album, which she did get some country radio airplay for. I am equally in love with this album, which so far I haven’t heard getting any love on the radio. Stephen Thompson said on this week’s New Music Friday episode of the All of Songs Considered podcast that Carly Pearce would have been a huge star in country music if it was 1995 and he’s not wrong. It’s probably why I love her music so much because 90’s country music is my favorite.

I was unsure what song from the album I actually wanted to feature here because I really like almost every song on it. I finally decided to go with “It Won’t Always Be Like This” because Carly Pearce co-wrote it with Natalie Hemby and Sam Ellis and I love Natalie Hemby, so it lets me promote two awesome country ladies at the same time. It’s a lovely country ballad about really living in the moment and cherishing the times you are living through as you’re living them rather than waiting and realizing what special times they were in your memories. Take a listen to this song, but I also encourage to seek out the whole album because it’s great.

I’m still plowing ahead with new music by country female artists over here in my New Music Friday posts. This week I have “Run Away with Me”, the newest single off of Michaela Anne’s third album Desert Dove. The album came out last year at the end of September, but this song was just released as a single a few weeks ago. It reminds me a lot of the music being put out by country women in the 90’s, which was my favorite. Don’t let country radio make you think there aren’t great female country artists out there.