TANNER ADELL’S GLOBALIZING AMBITIONS IN COUNTRY-POP

October 21, 2024

When Ladygunn interviewed Tanner Adell one year ago, her dream collaboration, she said, was one with Beyoncé. In March of this year, that dream was released from the bud of possibility onto the waiting meadows of music streaming platforms everywhere, in a limpid, enchanting cover of “Blackbird” by The Beatles. Adell was one of three country singers invited onto the track. Since then, she has composed “Too Easy” for the action film Twisters (2024), sold out her London show to Brits in cowboy boots, and announced her headline tour The Buckle Bunny Tour. Things are happening— dreams are becoming reality for Adell, and no goal now seems out of reach for her enormous ambition. Her show in London was her first headliner with a crowd of about four hundred. In a quintessentially Gen Z move, she posted a TikTok video demonstrating appropriate attire. Among the acceptable outfits were “monochromatic bunny” (pink leotard, pink tights, pink stripper heels) and “swamp bunny” (camo, camo, bra-ish top). The London crowd did not disappoint, cosplaying “American” with glitz and bunny-ears galore. They were a crowd of definite fans, singing along to Adell’s “FU-150” with an enthusiasm likely unrelated to Henry Ford. “They were so loud, the screaming was deafening,” she recalls, with an affectionate little laugh. “Their accents were so cute, singing all the songs, every single one.”

Adell’s appeal to international listeners hinges, in part, in her own discreteness in country music. “I’m definitely unique in country music. For people who don’t come from America and the country, I appeal to them because I’m kind of on the outside too,” she says. The novelty of cowboy culture is part of the fun, and fun is the telos for her: “It’s part of the fantasy…I want people to feel like they can relate to [country] even if they didn’t grow up in, I don’t know, fucking Kansas.”

At the same time, Adell’s story feels essentially American, in part because of her scrappy, boot-strapping nascence as a country songwriter. Her recent release, “Silverado,” retells and fictionalizes her story of moving to Nashville, in pursuit of being a country star. “I was so broke,” she says. “I wish I had a Silverado, I didn’t even have a car at that time.” When questioned about any misgivings she might have had, she brushes off the possibility. “I’ve always been very ambitious, and I do what I want. Even when it’s the worst idea ever, and probably not logical,” she says. “A lot of people would tell me that this was a bad idea, but I just didn’t care because it felt like this is what I really wanted to do. I go after what I want, and I have a very clear idea of what I want.”

She has also expressed her magnificent ambition to be the first, or perhaps the second, “genuinely country pop star.” She hands the credits of first place to Shania Twain, but imagines herself in a musical lineage with her. “I feel like I’m picking up where she left off in 2024,” she says. She sees Twain as expanding the limitations and definitions of country; “[Twain] started the blending of [pop, rock, and country music] in a female diva pop way. And I hope other young artists see that country music can be really girly and cutesy and fun and weird and self-expressive. Instead of using the same vocabulary and the same three chords and a truth— it doesn’t have to be the same goddamn three chords and a truth,” she says. “You just have to tell your story. That’s what country music is.”

Adell certainly leans into that “diva pop” branch of country, as well as her own feminine charm. In fact, she’s girly with an almost drag-queen-esque air of flamboyant supremacy. In conversation, her voice is of a feline confidence, a laid-back sultriness that rises easily to laughter, and often descends to a purr. When she recounts the story of how her song “Too Easy” came into being, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a certain brand of middle school sleepover, during which my girlfriends and I would hype each other up to the gods while crushing the category of “boys” down to atomless existence. Her anecdote is a short one: after securing the IG follow of a crush, she declares to her friends, “Boys are just too easy!”

When asked about her experience with Beyonce, she says cryptically, “I can’t disclose currently…I underestimated how absolutely wonderful she could be.” I urge her to divulge, and she responds like a fortune cookie: “I see the blessings every single day.” So I leave it there.

In the down-to-the-hour hustle and whirl of activities that a rising artist in LA must needs enter, Adell experienced a loss of inspiration during the summer. She had not been home in two years. Still. a weeklong trip to Wyoming was enough to revive her, and she remembers the water and clean air with a mournful air. “It’s really hard to feel inspired when I feel I barely even have time to breathe,” she confides. “It’s hard to write about the country when I’m literally on a plane for half the time I’m awake.”

Adell’s sense of home is vested, also, in female country figures. She was raised by an adoptive family and had never known her birth mother; the first time she saw a picture of her mother, she was shocked by her resemblance to Dolly Parton. She then began watching interviews with Parton, her movies, “anything I could get my hands on.” “I kind of used Dolly Parton as a substitute for my mom, knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to ever meet her,” she tells me. “So being blonde became a really important thing to me, and felt almost like protection from Dolly Parton, like my mom was close to me and watching over me. Dolly Parton is a huge inspiration and a safety character to me.”

Raised as a Mormon by her adoptive parents, Adell served as a missionary for two years in Stockholm and is fluent in Swedish, an experience to which she attributes her work ethic. Now, she no longer belongs to any organized religion, and calls her move away from it a “huge turning point.” She is currently at work on music about her religious epiphanies.

From a distance, Adell always seems to be in the mode of production, which seems at odds (or perhaps combines to brilliance) with the relaxed charm of her conversation. “I am very intense. I’m extremely focused and very dedicated,” she says, with almost Plathian vigor. “I’ve always put 1,000,000% into anything that I’ve done. There was never another option for me.”

She strives towards a goal of connection, one of reaching “as many people as possible from all over the world,” making country music as exciting and moving for the Tokyo cosmopolitan as the born-and-bred Kansan. But how does one connect with such seemingly different peoples through one medium? “In the age of social media, every day I’m living I seem to connect with people all over the world,” she counters. “It’s about being myself and authentic, not just in music but who I show up as.”

She sees social media, on which much of her fanbase is built, as having completed a cycle; from the 2010s’ artificial ideal of tailored feeds, to now the cult of messy-girl candids, the online vogue has moved in a more humane direction— one not without flaws, but one that at least attempts to embrace them. “We’re really seeing artists just be themselves and sit down with a guitar in front of the camera— no makeup, a little selfie…” she muses. “I think that’s also a genuine way to connect with people all over the world. With social media, you’re at everybody’s fingertips.”