Tift Merritt Celebrates The Resilience Of Womanhood On New Single “Everyday Singing”

Merritt will play a special album launch show, with Q&A and signing, at London’s The Lower Third on June 28. Doors 6pm, onstage 7pm. Tickets: HERE

“Everyday Singing” was inspired by a series of letters between Rosetta Rietz, the dynamic New York-based second wave feminist dedicated to retrieving the erased foremothers of jazz and blues on her Rosetta Records label, and poet Dachine Rainer, who founded and edited the anarchist literary magazine Retort with her husband Holley Cantine, until expatriating to London when they divorced. “They were both raising daughters alone, fighting for what they believed in, worried about the world, and cheering each other on,” Merritt says about the letters. “They were such good friends to each other. It was heartening to find myself and my friends and our present in their words to each other.”

Even in a world marked by heartbreak and uncertainty, the lyrics speak to how humanity survives because people keep creating, caring for one another, because women keep showing up.  The “Everyday Singing” choir was made up of women, friends, mothers, daughters, many of whom were researchers whose funding was impacted under the current administration. “We gathered in the lobby of [my developing hotel] The Gables on a December night, and someone said, ‘But we don’t know how to sing,’” Merritt recalled. “‘Yes, you do!’ I told them. ‘You know the important kind; you do it every day.’ And we did. We had the most joyous time. It was the best party I ever threw.”

Listen to “Everyday Singing” HERE.

Merritt’s upcoming album marks a defining new chapter for the North Carolina-bred artist long regarded as one of Americana’s most influential voices. She stepped largely out of the spotlight following her 2017 album Stitch of the World, turning her focus toward raising her daughter, serving as a Practitioner-in-Residence at Duke University, helping shape the hotel reinvention of The Gables in Raleigh, NC, and advocating for musician rights through the Artist Rights Alliance. That time away –  lived fully and on her own terms – quietly expanded her sense of purpose, laying the foundation for the songs that would become Sugar.

A gorgeously unguarded collection rooted in Merritt’s radiant blend of country-soul, Sugar was written across eight years of lived experience and reveals an artist returning with renewed clarity and emotional depth. The album was tracked live at Nashville’s Gold Pacific Studios, featuring a wide-ranging group of collaborators, including producer Lawrence Rothman, guitarist Audley Freed (Alison Krauss, Sheryl Crow), multi-instrumentalist Robert Ellis (PJ Harvey, Faye Webster), Dr. Dog’s Eric Slick, Midlake’s McKenzie Smith, and Memphis-based arranger Art Edmaiston.