Outspoken glam-country star Tanner Adell is ready to tell her own story

Wearing false eyelashes and a blonde wig of human hair worth $13,000 – yes, really – Tanner Adell looks every inch the “glam-country” star she calls herself. “There’s a large part of the country audience that loves Shania Twain and Dolly Parton, the OG glam-country queens,” she says. And just like those icons that came before her, this trailblazer believes that “the magic really started happening” when she stopped trying to choose between country and other genres she loves.

Adell has broken out by playing fast and loose with her influences. On her 2023 mixtape ‘Buckle Bunny’, she blended country with trap beats (‘FU-150’), R&B girlband harmonies (‘Throw It Back’) and sleek K-pop-esque hooks (‘Strawberry Crush’). And even when she does go “straight up pop-country”, she incorporates “sounds I love from the ‘60s and ‘70s” – take ‘Love You A Little Bit’, a timeless drivetime anthem with a Taylor Swift-worthy chorus that’s her most-streamed song to date.

“Whenever you’re trying to do something different, there’s always going to be people telling you it won’t work,” Adell tells NME sanguinely. “Paving my own path, especially sound-wise in my music, makes it harder, but I think it’s going to pay off in the long run.”

We begin this interview in person, right after Adell’s photoshoot for The Cover. Though she’s been throwing poses for hours in an East London studio, she pivots quickly to a pretty deep conversation about being a woman in country music. “We’re pitted against each other because it always seems like there are only so many slots for us,” she says. “Whereas if you’re a man doing country music, there’s a good chance you’ll be [played] on the radio and get asked to open for a bigger artist.”

In the viral title track of ‘Buckle Bunny’, Adell deployed classic country storytelling to reclaim a sexist slur in the genre – one aimed at women who supposedly ‘chase’ rodeo cowboys. “I’m at the mini-mart in a miniskirt, ’bout to steal your man in a torn up T-shirt,” she sings – before making her agency and autonomy clear: “Drive my own truck, got my own money.”

Like that fictional rodeo queen, Adell is a go-getter who knows her worth. In February 2024, after Beyoncé dropped her country singles ‘Texas Hold ’Em’ and ‘16 Carriages’, the rising country star posted on X: “As one of the only Black girls in [the] country music scene, I hope Bey decides to sprinkle me with a dash of her magic for a collab.” Two months later, when Beyoncé released her country-influenced album, ‘Cowboy Carter’, Adell’s name was on the credits.

She features on ‘Blackbiird’, Beyoncé’s magical reimagining of the Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’, where Adell creates gleaming harmonies with three other Black female country stars: Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts and Tiera Kennedy. Beyoncé underscored this act of sisterly solidarity when she brought out the quartet during her Christmas Day NFL Halftime Show.

Adell also supplies backing vocals on the album’s psychedelic opening song, ‘Ameriican Requiem’. “I feel like maybe it’s a sign from the universe that I’m in the right place and I’m doing the right things,” she says of working with Queen Bey. “So many doors have been opened. It’s hard to not reap a benefit when you collaborate with a legendary artist.”

“There’s always going to be people telling you that doing something different won’t work”

Because time runs out on shoot day, we pick up the conversation a few days later on Zoom. By now, Adell has flown to Glasgow with the C2C: Country to Country tour, which brings dozens of American country stars to Europe. She’s so excited to be in Scotland that she’s treated herself to a new tattoo: a cute Highland cow, which she unveils to her 740,000 TikTok followers.

Though Adell says she gets “shy in social situations”, she’s comfortable drilling deep into her new single ‘Going Blonde’, a stunning stripped-back ballad from her upcoming debut album. The poignant track offers an incredibly intimate snapshot of Adell’s life as someone who was adopted as a baby: “I’m going blonde and I’m never going back – yeah, blonde like the mama I never had,” she sings on the chorus.

“Writing this song was a big part of my healing process,” she says, “I’m hoping that by sharing my story, I can help others.” Adell, who is biracial, was born in Kentucky, then adopted by a white couple who raised her in Manhattan Beach, California. She has four adoptive siblings – all biracial too – and the family spent their summers at a rustic ranch in Wyoming.

She says it’s not “too simplistic” to trace her music’s fusion of trad country and glossy pop to her two homes in very different states. “But I feel like I connected more with people in Wyoming,” she adds. “It was where I really came alive and got a lot of my personality from.”

Adell says she’s never experienced any overt racism as a biracial woman in country music, but she acknowledges she “wouldn’t be surprised if there’s been some sort of comment”. Two years ago, she posted on X: “I think I make country music the way Black people would have made country music in 2023 if they had been allowed to be part of the conversation when it started.” Today, she expands on this point eloquently.

“I feel like country music is the only genre that has had a hard time progressing and evolving,” she says. “Although the banjo has its origins in Africa, Black people weren’t necessarily involved in conversations surrounding country music.” She cites Charley Pride, who scored 29 country Number Ones between the late ’60s and early ’80s, as “one of the few Black people” recognised as a “traditional” country artist.

“But I do feel like if Black people had been more involved in the country scene, we might have a completely separate country genre by this point,” Adell continues. “I think it would have evolved into a sound very similar to what I’m making now.”

“It always seems like there are only so many slots for women in country music”

Adell is close to her adoptive parents, who raised her in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon faith. Still, it was “a shock” for them when she left the church a few years ago. “They were afraid that the industry had changed me, but now they see I’m still the same person even though I’m no longer practising.”

In fact, she gets on better now with her adoptive mother than she did as a teenager. “We would butt heads a lot and we could not be more opposite,” Adell recalls. “I’m into making clothes and doing my hair and nails, and she was a college basketball coach. So there were many times where I wondered, ‘Why did my birth mother not want me?’”

Adell poured this unresolved longing into ‘Going Blonde’, in which she pictures her birth mother as “flirty and gorgeous, but tougher than nails”. Sadly, the musician’s teenage “daydreams” were replaced by a heartbreaking reality when she learned more about her roots. “My mom’s life wasn’t that pretty – she died of a drug overdose,” she confides. “That’s where the dichotomy in the song comes from.”

Adell reconnected with her biological family a few years ago through the genealogy website Ancestry.com. When she received a message from Donnell, a man who believed he was her half-brother, she was incredibly excited. However, the truth they uncovered was even more surprising: Donnell is actually her full biological brother.

It’s a “long story” that Adell shares without self-pity. “My birth mother’s husband was in the military, and while he was deployed [internationally], she had an affair,” she explains. When her birth mother fell pregnant with Adell, she presumed the baby was illegitimate and decided to give her up for adoption.

“Country music is the only genre that has had a hard time progressing and evolving”

However, because Adell and Donnell share so much DNA, they know for certain that they are “full blood” siblings with the same mother and father. “My birth mom must have been pregnant with me before she had an affair,” she surmises. Sadly, she never got to meet her biological mother, but she has formed a relationship with her biological father, who “had a little rap career and managed rappers” in Atlanta in the ’90s.

“I’m very fortunate. Not everybody gets these answers,” she says. Adell also believes that getting to grips with her family tree has enriched her songwriting. “With my album, I have a real story to tell and I’m finally ready to tell it,” she says purposefully.

She also derives plenty of confidence from having a Beyoncé collab on her résumé – after that, no one is off the table. “I’d love to do something with a female rapper: I love Saweetie, GloRilla and Megan Thee Stallion,” she says. “And I love Chappell Roan. Maybe she’ll put me on the remix of ‘The Giver’?”

But above all, Adell wants to continue paving her own unique path. “I don’t think there’s been a turning point in my career yet,” she says. “I’m certain this album will be that turning point.”

Tanner Adell’s new single ‘Going Blonde’ is out now via Love Renaissance.

Listen to Tanner Adell’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.

Words: Nick Levine
Photography: Rachel Billings
Hair: Sheena Adae-Amoakoh
Hair Assistant: Kayla Dixon
Make-up: Paintedbyesther
Styling: Matthew + Reginald Reisman, The Only Agency
Styling Assistant: Richie DaSilva
Label: Love Renaissance

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