Wynonna Judd Says Writing a Song About the Dad She Never Met ‘Almost Killed Me’ [Exclusive]

If you think you can hear Wynonna Judd crying in the recording of her new song, "Girl Who Could Sing," you're not imagining things.

The singer tells Taste of Country that she recorded it as a "performance vocal," wanting to capture her raw emotion. "I wanted it to be so real that there are tears on some of the lines," Judd says. "It was devastating, but it was also exhilarating at the same time, because I knew I was telling my truth."

Her album is called The Hard Truth, and going in, fans might be tempted to assume that the "Hard Truth" central to Judd's life is about her mother and The Judds band mate Naomi Judd, who died by suicide in 2022 after decades of mental health struggles and close but often traumatic relationships with her daughters.

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Naomi, and Judd's relationship with her late mom, is indeed a presence on the album. But perhaps the most excruciating truth comes from "Girl Who Could Sing," where Judd sings about the father she never got to know, who died just a couple weeks before she was supposed to meet him for the first time.

What Is Wynonna Judd's "Girl Who Could Sing" About?

Wynonna Judd grew up believing that Michael Ciminella, who was Naomi's husband for eight years, was her father. It wasn't until 1994, when she was 30, that she learned that her biological father was someone else: A man named Charles Jordan, whom Naomi had dated shortly before beginning her relationship with Ciminella.

It took Judd six years to be ready to meet her biological dad. By 2000, she was ready, but it was too late: He died on Aug. 4, 2000, just two weeks before Judd had planned to meet him for the first time.

The loss left her feeling like a portal to her past had permanently slammed shut, and she'd never find answers for important questions about her origin story. While she'd never known Jordan, he did, in a very real way, know her: Personal affects found in his home showed that he'd been carefully following her career.

"When they found him — it was a week later, unfortunately, because he was such a hermit — he was sitting on the couch with his groceries on either side of him," Judd recounts. "They went to looking around and they found a drawer in his desk full of newspaper clippings."

When she told that story to her husband Cactus Moser — who produced The Hard Truth and wrote the bulk of the songs with her — he responded, "That is a song."

They sat down and wrote out the facts, editing Judd's raw reactions only enough to make them rhyme. "How can a headstone in Pine Hill / Know you better than me?" one line reads. "Now the middleman's gone, all the answers died with her, too," another says, referencing Naomi.

"Did you ever buy a ticket? Did you come to a show?" she wonders at one emotional high point in the song. "It will plague my mind for a lifetime to never really know."

Wynonna Judd Says Writing a Song About Her Father "Almost Killed Me"

In an album full of emotional, true-to-life lyrics, Judd says that "Girl Who Could Sing" was among the most painful to write.

"It almost killed me, I'll be honest," she admits. "I almost died of a broken heart. I was so, so devastated."

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But she pushed through, because "turning [that pain] into purpose really healed me. Really healed me." A common thread on Judd's new album is the power of speaking painful truths out loud — and nowhere is that power greater than on "Girl Who Could Sing."

Judd wrote nine out of 10 songs on The Hard Truth — an anomaly for her, as a singer who frequently recorded outside cuts during her time with The Judds and beyond. With Moser there to help the songs along, Judd unpacked her most difficult emotions into song. She describes the process as "liberating and at times debilitating."

The Hard Truth arrives in full on Friday (Oct. 2.) It will be her first solo album in a decade.