Wynonna Judd Reveals the ‘Hard Truth’ About Finding Her Real Dad and Losing Mom Naomi: ‘I Feel Vulnerable’ (EXCLUSIVE)

The most powerful art is often born out of pain and struggle. Wynonna Judd’s new album, The Hard Truth, releasing October 2, is the Country Music Hall of Famer’s first new solo album in a decade and the songs ache with loss and regret yet reveal the soul of a survivor. 

“This album is so personal. I feel very vulnerable,” the Country Music Hall of Famer tells Woman’s World as our latest cover star (get your copy here!) of her first project for ANTI-Records. “Everybody’s got a story. This is mine and I’m gonna share it and see what happens. I’m hoping these songs help people get the help they need, the love, the peace. This is my truth. The audience is going to hear these songs, and I’m hoping that if they’ve gone through a similar experience, they see that if I can do it, they can too. That’s why I’m doing this. It’s healing.”

Wynonna’s songwriting skills are on display

As half of the groundbreaking duo The Judds with her late mother Naomi and as a solo artist, Wynonna has long been one of the most celebrated voices in country music. But for the first time in her career, The Hard Truth reveals her gifts as a songwriter. Working with her husband of 14 years, Cactus Moser, Wynonna penned nine of the album’s 10 songs. 

“It was cathartic,” she says of the writing experience. “It’s important for me to share my truth with people. I just had to. It was one of those things that you just wake up and go, ‘Okay, this needs to happen.’”

Wyonna got personal on ‘Girl Who Could Sing’

One of the most poignant songs on the album is “Girl Who Could Sing,” written about her biological father. “My mother never told me about my real father, and I never got to meet him,” she says of learning the truth about her biological father when she was 30 and pregnant with her first child. 

“I was in therapy with Ashley and Mom. They called me in, and I thought it was either an intervention, or she’s really sicker than we thought,” Wynonna recalls. “I walked in, and mom was crying, and Ashley ended up telling me, because Mom just wasn’t in a place where she could say it. It was just startling and devastating.”

It was a bombshell that shook Wynonna to her core. “I had everything, and when I found out about that, I felt like I had nothing. I’ve come to accept it and heal from it, and that’s why I wrote the song with Cactus,” she says. “The very first thing I remember learning about my daddy was that they found a drawer full of clippings that he had of me. When I said that, Cactus literally said, ‘This is a song.’”

When asked why Naomi never told her about her father, Wynonna replies, “Shame. Shame and guilt keeps people locked up. She was desperately sad, and she felt a lot of guilt. She kept it because she just didn’t want to share it.”

Wynonna chronicles her pain in “Girl Who Could Sing,” asking, Was I ever really your daughter, or just a girl who could sing? 

“I didn’t get to meet him, and I was planning on meeting him,” she says, “but he died two weeks after I made the decision to reach out.”

As raw and personal as the lyrics are, the production of the music took the same path. “There are no fancy tricks,” she says. “We didn’t use autotune, and we didn’t use all the stuff that we have today, technically. There’s very little reverb. You’re gonna feel like you’re listening to me talking right now. It is so down to earth. We literally did these live vocals, sitting in a room with a band. We worked really hard at making it authentic.”

In recording The Hard Truth, she recruited special guests including Iron & Wine on “Hear Me Now,” The War and Treaty on “The Hopeful Lie” and Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers on “Everything.” The only outside song on the record is “Am I Missing Out,” which was written by her stepson Wyatt. “He lived with us for nine months and he walked into our bedroom when we were watching a show and said, ‘I want you to hear this.’ He played it on his computer and I cried. I felt like that song was so me. It just hit me and I knew I had to record it.”

Confronting tough emotions

Wynonna admits it was hard to sing these songs in the studio. “There were times when I had to stop and go outside,” she sighs.

The songs cover a lot of emotional territory because Wynonna’s life has been a combination of extreme triumphs and heartbreaking challenges, from the numerous awards and music business accolades to her mother’s suicide on April 30, 2022— the day before she and Wynonna were to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. A grief-stricken Wy showed up and accepted the honor.

“I’m proud of myself for showing up the next day after Mom killed herself. I woke up the next morning and went to the Country Music Hall of Fame and got inducted,” she says. “To this day, don’t know how I did it, but I knew that I have a destiny. My mama taught me that. She said, ‘You’re special, and God has a plan for you.’ And I never forgot that. So even in the midst of all that happened with Mom, I knew to show up.”

The album also touches on Wynonna’s troubled relationship with her daughter Grace, who struggles with addiction. “The song ‘Drive’ is about my daughter being in prison, and me going to visit her. All I could do was drive. We wrote the song about me going down and visiting with her,” she says. “That one was really tough for me. There’s joy on the record as well. It’s not all dark and stormy.”

Wynonna also shows her sassy self on the album

Despite the heavy material on the album, the sassy Wynonna that fans have come to expect is also present on such songs as “Kentucky Queen” and the buoyant “Love Ain’t Got the Best of Me.”

There are also moments of levity during the interview. When asked to fill in the blank—If blank isn’t happiness, I don’t know what is—she replies “orgasm,” and laughs mischievously. 

She absolutely glows when the conversation turns to her granddaughter Kaliyah. “I’m raising my granddaughter Kaliyah. She’s four,” Wynonna says. “We’re always playing on the swings and fishing down at the lake. She’s a princess cowgirl. She’s invested in the pony that we got her, and she rides almost every day. And she has chores, which is, I think, really important and no, no, no internet or anything like that. With my kids, I raised them on the road. I homeschooled, but now I can play.”

Wynonna credits faith and the people closest to her, including her husband, for helping her through the hard times. “Everything I see and hear about the Word of God, He’s with me, and I know that I’m not alone, finally,” she says. “It took me a while, but I’m not alone. I have a great group of people around me that support me and tell me no. I just work really hard at doing the next right thing, because that’s all I have.”