Glen Campbell’s daughter Ashley shares considerable musical chops and undaunted humor on this lighthearted new track.
The last time we checked in with Glen Campbell’s daughter Ashley, she was grieving the loss of her dad on August 8, 2017.
We’d watched her play with her father in the Oscar-nominated documentary Glen Campbell ... I’ll Be Me, which chronicled his final Goodbye Tour and declining condition as he battled Alzheimer’s. And we’d mourned right alongside her when she sang “Remembering,” her poignant, heart-wrenching long goodbye to her dad: “We can talk until you can’t even remember my name / Daddy, don’t you worry, I’ll do the remembering.”
So it’s gratifying and heartwarming to find Ashley’s spirit intact and her craft even more well-honed on her upcoming album, The Lonely One. The 13-track debut, which Rolling Stone Country says “flaunts her banjo-picking talents,” drops May 11. The record reveals not just Campbell’s considerable musical chops but also a surprising and undaunted sense of humor.
It turns out that the multitalented scion of the Rhinestone Cowboy also studied at The Groundlings in L.A., where her professor was actress Melissa McCarthy. The schooling of that famous improv venue and Campbell’s apparent natural talent for comedy show up in spades on the track “Better Boyfriend,” a lighthearted anthem celebrating the positive aspects of being an independent woman.
Written by Campbell, Billy Montana, and Tiffany Goss and co-produced by Ashley and her brother Cal Campbell, “Better Boyfriend” comes across with plenty of nimble banjo and just the right amount of sass in lines like this zinger: “It ain’t that hard to do / I’d be a better boyfriend than you.”
Campbell’s press materials say that the songs on The Lonely One “are intended to make listeners question their circumstances and remind them to smile, laugh, even cry.” They do that and more: They make us happy that Glen Campbell’s talent lives on not just in his own recordings but also in the talent of his daughter.
Watch this sneak peek from an NPR World Cafe taping with Ashley Campbell, featuring banjo luminary Carl Jackson.
For more on Ashley Campbell, visit her website.
