Anne Murray, 80, Takes No. 1 Spot With New Album, 17 Years After Retiring: ‘I Was Gobsmacked!’ (EXCLUSIVE)
The country music legend reveals how a persistent fan brought her lost recordings back to life
When country music legend Anne Murray decided to retire 17 years ago, the four-time Grammy winner had no idea she would return to the top of the charts in 2025, but thanks to a very persistent fan, her new album, Here You Are, hit No. 1 on the Canadian Country Charts and No. 8 on the U.S. Country Chart.
“It all happened because of a guy named Lynn Holt, who came to see me for the first time in Las Vegas when he was 15 with his parents,” Murray tells Woman’s World. Holt, now in his fifties, encouraged Murray to release her undiscovered gems. “He was a dog on a bone. He wasn’t letting it go. It’s such a blessing. The fact that I got an album out of songs that I thought were gone forever is remarkable.”
Dressed in jeans, a blue and white striped shirt and pale pink sneakers, Murray sits smiling in a suite at Nashville’s famed Opryland Hotel. It’s been a few years since she’s been to Music City and she comments on how much the airport has changed—“That airport! Oh my Lord!”
She’s in town for The Music of My Life: An All Star Tribute to Anne Murray, a special tribute at the Grand Ole Opry House featuring Trisha Yearwood, Collin Raye, Martina McBride, k.d. lang, Kathy Mattea, Lorrie Morgan, Pam Tillis, Shenandoah, The Gatlin Brothers, Victoria Shaw, Michelle Wright and others performing such Murray classics as “Shadows in the Moonlight,” “You Needed Me,” “Could I Have this Dance,” “A Love Song,” “I Just Fall in Love Again,” “Danny’s Song,” “Snowbird” and “A Little Good News.”
“I don’t know what to make of it, really,” she says of the tribute with a slightly embarrassed smile. “[There are] all of these things happening this year and I just shake my head. I’m so appreciative and so honored.”
Murray was also appreciative and rather surprised at the response to her album when it was released in September by Universal Music Canada/Capitol Records. “I didn’t believe it at first. I thought they were kidding me,” she says of her 33rd studio album hitting No. 1 on the charts.
Anne Murray looks back on her career
Murray, now a very youthful 80, is a legend in country, pop and adult contemporary music. She has sold over 55 million albums worldwide and amassed over 1 billion global streams. She was the first Canadian female solo artist to reach No. 1 on the U.S. charts, paving the way for Celine Dion, Shania Twain, k.d. lang and Sarah McLachlan. She’s received a record-breaking 26 JUNO Awards and remains the most awarded artist in the history of the JUNOs. She was also the first woman to win Album of the Year at the Country Music Association Awards for A Little Good News.
Murray has many fond memories of her early days visiting Nashville. “I remember the first time I came to Nashville in ’71 or ’72. I shared a dressing room with Dolly Parton, Minnie Pearl and Loretta Lynn. There were eight of us in that room and the hairspray was overpowering,” she says with a laugh. “I still remember those days. Those women were so nice to me. I felt like a fish out of water, being from Canada and not being from the South, and yet they were so welcoming.”
When asked about blazing a trail for other female Canadian artists, Murray responds, “I didn’t even think about it. All I was doing was getting out there and singing songs and hoping that I could do something with it as a career. It never occurred to me that I was forging a path of any kind, but I did it, and at the time, it was tough going.
“All my musicians were men, and they were all older than I was when I started because I was in my twenties,” she continues. “They were really good musicians, but a lot of them misbehaved. There was a lot of alcohol and drugs, and I was not in charge like I wanted to be because they wouldn’t listen to me. So it was a lot to go through, but I grew up and said, ‘Okay, I’m the boss. If you’re going to do that, you’re gone.’ You can’t go out on stage and be scared to death of what’s going to happen next or if somebody is going to fall down drunk. It was awful. I dealt with a lot of that. But you grow up pretty quick and you realize you can’t put up with it.”
Anne Murray dishes on her latest project
Murray survived those challenging early years and is happy with the career she’s had. She is excited about her new project and credits Holt’s persistence for launching this latest chapter with Here You Are, an 11-song collection that features songs she had previously recorded between 1979 and 1996. Had it not been for Holt, the songs would have likely remained in the vault and never been heard.
“I sent all of my archives to the University of Toronto, and there were 50-75 boxes,” Murray says. “There were some cassette tapes, because I used to take home cassette tapes after a day of recording. They digitized everything at U of T and then you could get it online. He [Holt] lived in Las Vegas and found them online. Then he went to the University of Toronto, found them, and listened. He said, ‘If these are here, then they must be on a big tape somewhere.’ In fact, the masters were given to the University of Calgary. Then he started going back and forth to Calgary and finding these songs on the masters.”
Holt reached out to Murray by way of a mutual friend, but she admits she was initially hesitant to revisit the songs. “I said, ‘I don’t want to listen to those because if they didn’t make the cut the first time, why would I bother?’ But I got brow-beaten for a few years and finally I had to listen. Well, I was gobsmacked! So I said okay, and before I knew it, we were working on them with producer Bob Rock.”
Murray culled the rediscovered songs from more than 40 down to the 11 that made the record, and she had a chance to debut the album for a select group of fans. “Every summer I have a meet and greet with fans from all over the world at the Anne Murray Centre,” she says of the museum in her hometown of Springhill, Nova Scotia.
“They come and spend a weekend, and the first day we usually have lunch together and a Q&A just to catch up. On Sunday, we listened to the new album for the first time and there wasn’t a dry eye in the place, really. It was so nice to be able to play it for them.”
Murray recalls the title track, “Here You Are,” being removed from a previous album because it already had too many ballads, and she’s happy it is now seeing the light of day. “‘Here You Are’ is a Hugh Prestwood song, and what a fine songwriter,” she says. “It’s a great song.”
One of the most endearing songs on the album is “I Lost My Dog,” written by Al Gambino, Murray’s Las Vegas orchestra leader. “It is so different. I have some friends who listen and kind of laugh,” she says. “He handed me that song and I listened to it on a little cassette, and we took it into the studio. The song really moved me, and it wasn’t until many years later that I even had a dog. It’s a good song and it’s very heartfelt. If some people kind of snicker at it, that’s fine, but it didn’t make me snicker. It got to me.”
Murray shared an interesting tidbit about “Feels Like More Than Dancing.” “What’s funny about that song is I dropped lyrics in that song. If you listen to it carefully, you’ll hear a spot where I missed a line. You could hear me go, ‘Oh, s–t!,’ and so we took the ‘Oh, s–t’ out and left it blank and hoped that nobody would notice. I didn’t think I should leave that ‘Oh, s–t’ in there,” she grins.
The album also features a stunning cover of the Ferlin Husky hit “Gone” and Murray’s take on the Bryan Adams classic “Straight from the Heart,” which features new background vocals by Murray and her daughter Dawn Langstroth, as well as a tasty pedal steel solo by her nephew Dale Murray.
“It was a family affair, and it was so much fun to do after all these years of not recording,” she smiles. “There’s a picture [on the inside sleeve of the vinyl record] of me with Dale and my daughter Dawn. We were doing background vocals at his studio in Nova Scotia. Dawn sang some background vocals. Our voices sound almost exactly alike, and Dale is a really fine guitar player, so he put some guitar parts and she sang some vocals and I did a couple of things.”
Anne Murray is enjoying retirement despite recent success
Murray enjoyed being back in the studio, but she’s quick to point out that she’s also really enjoying her retirement. “I left when I could still sing really well, but I was tired,” she admits. “Forty years is a long time and I had to stop. I really felt like I didn’t have a choice. I really needed some time just to know my kids and my grandkids now and I never looked back. It was absolutely the right decision and I’m so happy that I did that. I’ve been retired for 17 years, and I just quietly stopped. I didn’t do a farewell tour. That’s just kind of my way.”
She might be retired, but the former physical education teacher-turned superstar stays busy. “I play a lot of golf. I have friends. I read. I do all kinds of things. I just take more time to do all the things I do,” she smiles. “I try not to be frantic about things like I was for 100 years. Trying to bury all that guilt about leaving my children. I hated leaving my children and the guilt associated with that, but they are okay and well beyond it, and we enjoy each other, so it’s great.”
As far as what she listens to these days, she likes talk radio and always returns to some longtime favorites. “If I’m going to put somebody on, I’ll put Bonnie Raitt on, but I do listen to a little bit of everything from time to time. Music has taken a backseat in my life in many ways, but that’s okay too because I did it, and I did a lot of it.”
When asked if she has a favorite among her many hits, she says, “What pops to the fore is ‘Just Another Woman In Love,’ and I think it is because it was written by women [Wanda Mallette and Patti Ryan]. It was a woman’s song and it was so easy to sing. ‘You Needed Me’ was also pretty meaningful to me.”
As the conversation draws to a close, does she have any advice for WW readers? “Stay fit. Stay active. Work hard. Do whatever it takes to do the best you can and that’s what I always did,” she says. “I always put my nose to the grindstone and went at it, but for me, being fit and being as active as I could be has helped me a lot. I couldn’t have done it on the road without being that part of me. Also, treat your people well. Treat everybody around you just the way you want to be treated. I always did that, always did that and I got it back 100%.”
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