I was already planning on writing about Maren Morris’s new song “Better Than We Found It”, which actually came out a little over a week ago but which I had not yet heard in time for last week’s New Music Friday post. In keeping with the tradition I seem to have started over the last few week’s for my New Music Friday posts it’s another song about thinking about the world we’re creating and leaving for the next generation. It’s a song Maren Morris wrote for her son and the video very sweetly includes him and a little love letter to him at the end.

Then I woke up this morning to a surprise drop from Yola, who is one of artists that sang on some of the songs for the Highwomen album, the country super group mainly composed of Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Amanda Shires, and Natalie Hemby and also featuring Yola and Sheryl Crow. “Hold On” features Brandi Carlile and Natalie Hemby on backing vocals, Sheryl Crow on piano, and Jason Isbell on guitar which he also played on the Highwomen album. According to Yola “‘Hold On’ is asking the next [generation] to take up space, to be visible and to show what it looks to be young, gifted and Black.”

I usually try to post YouTube videos rather than Spotify links because I know not everyone has a Spotify account, but for whatever reason there doesn’t seem to be a legal version of the song up on YouTube yet. Though somehow there are already multiple illegally uploaded versions. It’s available through all the streaming services so go listen wherever you have an account.