Hovvdy combats ‘Nashville ego death’ on their new album, Big World.
Two years ago, Hovvdy released their self-titled album. And it is a masterpiece. Martin says that when they went into the studio, their producer, Sarlo had a concept, “he described it as lo-fi in IMAX.
The self-titled album captured them looking back with nostalgia. Then that period came to a close. They were six albums in. Now what?
They moved to Nashville. They’d signed a publishing deal and started pitching songs to big artists in boardrooms. They found themselves playing the game. “You get closer to mid-life and you don’t really have the luxury of not grappling with the big world and big responsibilities,” Martin said.
There is a specific ego death that many musicians feel when they move to Nashville. Everyone is trying to make it in the music industry. Taylor said the most boring thing you can do in Nashville to make music. So they confronted that feeling.
“Big World” is Hovvdy where they are now. Experiencing the joys of marriage. Processing life difficulties. Finding comfort in their place in the world.
Tap link in bio for the full story and follow for more from Music and Culture reporter Justin Barney.
Photo: Taylor Clark
Recordings an artist has labored over can become casualties of terminated business partnerships. But Houston Kendrick couldn’t bear to let that happen.
He called on the highly creative friends in his tight-knit Nashville circle to help him finish his new album and visuals. One person he called was his bestie Prana Supreme, who’s navigated her own music career.
“As an artist myself, I completely understood the uphill battle that is trying to get a team of people to understand your vision,” Supreme says.
She assisted while Kendrick`s bud Blaire Beamer designed such complex looks that he grew nervous. He recalls protesting, “Blaire, this sounds crazy and expensive! I can’t do this!”
Beamer had faith in their resourcefulness. “As queer people from the South or who live in the South,” they reason, “it is intrinsic to our nature to know how to make a lot out of a little.”
And Beamer did just that, translating recycled materials into striking costumes. A mermaid skirt made from a shower curtain and CDs, a corset dyed with pomegranate and lines with old computer keyboard keys, and more that Kendrick donned for high-concept photo shoots.
The visuals they made accentuate how Kendrick defies dominant narratives in songs like “American Trash.” “In the chorus I say, ‘Look at me all in my American drag.’ To me, that`s really the whole point: This bravado, this exceptionalism, all the things that we are taught to feel proud about our American identity. All of it is drag. All of is a costume. And from my perspective, Black gay boy from Birmingham, Alabama, there are real things that I`m proud of.”
Kendrick can count the look and feel of his second album “Portrait of a Boy on Fire” among them. Even without a budget, he realized his grandest vision yet the DIY way.
Tap link in bio for full story from Senior Music Writer Jewly Hight.
Luke Rogers: Photo
Houston Kendrick + Blaire Beamer: Co-Creative Directors and Styling
Bernadine Gunderson: MUA + Styling + Co-Creative Director (Shine on U)
Noah Tidmore + Bryant Bural: Video
Oscar Villanueva: Video
Prana Diggs: Creative Assistant
Notable quotables for the week with a focus on Nashville infrastructure, plus a look at American identity from artist Houston Kendrick.
Nashville Metro Council is looking into traffic controls amid a surge in pedestrian deaths. Twenty-one people have been killed by drivers so far this year.
Data centers are driving up demand for electricity. Utilities will have to meet that demand, which means building out more power generation. So far, the discourse has focused widely on how to pay for that, be that upping everyone’s electric bills or charging data centers special rates. But there is also a question over what kinds of power generation utilities like the Tennessee Valley Authority should employ — old-fashioned fossil-fueled sites, renewables like solar and wind, or nuclear.
Speaking of nuclear, Gov. Bill Lee is pursuing a Department of Energy partnership that could bring nuclear waste facilities to the state. It could bring $50 billion in investment, but the risks are roiling elected officials.
Tap link in bio for our in-depth stories and to sign up for the NashVillager newsletter, a human-powered 5-day-a-week email direct to your inbox with local stories, info, and ticket giveaways.
A Japanese nuclear company is betting on Tennessee as a hub for fusion power.
Kyoto Fusioneering is moving its U.S. headquarters to partner with Oak Ridge National Laboratory in building a facility where fusion companies can test a component of their plant designs.
“We came to East Tennessee to build a physical anchor for an allied fusion supply chain,” said Bibake Uppal, president of Kyoto Fusioneering America.
People have been trying to recreate controlled fusion on Earth for almost a century. It doesn’t produce waste like fission, which powers the nuclear plants of today. Scientists reached a milestone in 2022 when Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory produced a nuclear fusion reaction that resulted in a net energy gain.
To achieve fusion, researchers use isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. Tritium is rare, but people can produce it by wrapping a shell containing lithium around a fusion reaction.
That shell is called a breeding blanket, and that’s where Kyoto Fusioneering comes in. The company is building a particle accelerator with ORNL that will allow researchers to test prototype blankets.
The facility may be critical to the future of fusion.
Tap link in bio for more from environmental reporter Caroline Eggers.
Images: Kyoto Fusioneering and ORNL, NASA, U.S. Dept. of Energy
What if you could hold Johnny Cash’s handwritten lyrics in your hand? Students at Belmont University in Nashville will soon be able to dive into a trove of archival items.
WPLN`s Justin Barney was the first reporter to view items in the collection.
The university purchased what they described as a metaphorical "trunk in the attic" from the Cash family for $8.6 million. Hundreds of bankers boxes are full of personal items, including photos and one-off specialties like a hermitically sealed bag of cotton from Cash`s childhood farm in Arkansas.
There will be a class at the university this year where students will learn how to archive and preserve items. They will also digitize part of the collection, which will be made available publicly in about a year. The physical collection will live permanently in a new building going up on Music Row.
Demand is already building to see the collection. One Cash biographer will pour though it to look at how Cash navigated the music industry though contracts, and a musician has requested time to look at the artifacts and be inspired.
WPLN’s one-hour radio special, The Debt: What Tennessee Owes Its HBCUs” just won a National Association of Black Journalists “Salute to Excellence” award.
Camellia Burris, who co-produced the podcast with Emily Siner, accepted the award in person last weekend at the NABJ convention in Atlanta.
The Debt was a collaboration with The Tennessee Lookout, with support from the Pulitzer Center and the Education Writers Association.
More at link in bio.
Notable quotables for the week came from a handful of feel-good stories, like a look into highland cows’ arrival on the Tennessee State Fair scene and a preview of local indie pop duo Hovvdy’s new record.
But there were also some difficult stories this week.
WPLN criminal justice reporter Paige Pfleger and her reporting partner, ProPublica’s Aliyya Swaby, released their latest investigation into Tennessee’s juvenile justice system. It looked into systematic approaches to obscuring abuse in the facilities.
Tennessee carried out the fourth execution under its latest lethal injection protocol. Anthony Darrell Hines was put to death for the 1985 killing of Catherine Jean Jenkins. There were widespread concerns this execution would face the same obstacles as the attempted execution in May, when the state’s prison staff failed to establish IV access for the lethal drugs. However, Hines was pronounced dead within 20 minutes of the drugs being administered.
Tap link in bio for our in-depth stories and to sign up for the NashVillager newsletter, a human-powered 5-day-a-week email direct to your inbox with local stories, info, and ticket giveaways.
Tennessee college scholarships are at risk.
Lottery proceeds fund these scholarships, but lottery revenue declined by 22% between fiscal years 2022 and 2025, according to a report by ThinkTennessee.
The analysis shows that scholarship spending exceeded lottery proceeds for the first time in 2025. This created a gap typically covered by sports wagering revenue. However, a new law now directs sports wagering revenue to the state’s school voucher program.
Researchers suggest that Tennessee take note of how other states are bringing in more revenue. One example is through lottery modernization — such as Tennessee retailers accepting debit cards.
Tap link in bio for more for more from education reporter Camellia Burris.
Photos: Unsplash, ThinkTennessee
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‘They’re putting kids’ lives at risk’: How abuse in a Tennessee businessman’s juvenile prisons remained under wraps
Tennessee’s highest-security youth prisons are operated by a single private company. Former staff say they felt pressure to hide abuse and other serious incidents from the state and to handle medical emergencies without calling 911.
Curious Nashville Returns!
Back by popular demand, the WPLN fan favorite series Curious Nashville is here to investigate oddities, share local history, tell stories of interesting people, and explain how local institutions operate.
You ask the questions, and we answer.
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