“I feel like this is the most honest and vulnerable I’ve ever been,” the singer says her new album ‘The Hard Truth,’ which was inspired by love and pain

NEED TO KNOW

• Wynonna Judd opens up to PEOPLE about recording her new album, The Hard Truth, which explores her complex relationships with her late mother and troubled daughter
• The album marks her first release in a decade and features deeply personal songs cowritten with her husband, Cactus Moser
• Wynonna also talks about raising her 4½-year-old granddaughter while navigating family challenges

While Wynonna Judd was working on her deeply personal new album, her days started with tenacity and ended in tears.

“I would march down to the studio with determination and walk back to the house . . . and just cry the whole way home,” says the country star, 62, who recorded The Hard Truth — her first album in a decade — on her sprawling, 1,000-acre property near Franklin, Tenn.

When she sits down with PEOPLE on a September afternoon at a hilltop estate not far from her home, her voice is steady as she recalls the emotional moments. “It was both painful and healing,” says Judd, clad in a rhinestone-studded tee featuring the face of her late friend Dolly Parton. “It felt like I was standing in church, giving my testimony.”

Call this country music confessional the gospel according to Wynonna. The singer’s first album since her mom and former collaborator, Naomi Judd, died by suicide at age 76 in 2022 chronicles a lifetime of love and hurt. “Raw and real is what this album is,” she says.

Wynonna cowrote nine of the album’s 10 tracks with her husband of 14 years, musician and producer Cactus Moser, and the songs lay bare her “complicated” feelings for her mother (“I love you, I need you, I hate you some days,” she sings on one); the pain of never getting to know her biological father, whose identity Naomi kept secret for decades; and her anguish over her estranged daughter Grace Kelley, 30, who has struggled with addiction and is now serving a 15-month sentence in a Virginia jail.

“I feel like this is the most honest and vulnerable I’ve ever been,” says Wynonna, who’s raising Grace’s daughter Kaliyah, 4½, with Moser, 69. “It’s there for everyone to hear. So there are some days I think, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ And then other days I think, ‘There comes a point in your life when you are ready to tell your testimony.’ ”

Moser encouraged her to let it out. “I knew it was going to be cathartic,” he says.

For years Wynonna kept much bottled inside. As half of the country sensation the Judds, she was the quieter foil to her outgoing mom, who sparkled onstage and cracked wise in interviews, sometimes at her daughter’s expense.

After making their debut in the early 1980s, the mother-daughter duo of modest means from Ashland, Ky., enjoyed major success with hits like “Mama He’s Crazy” and “Love Can Build a Bridge.” They became one of the most successful country acts, selling 20 million albums, notching 14 No. 1 hits on Billboard’s country singles chart and winning five Grammys and nine Country Music Association Awards along the way. (Wynonna racked up four more No. 1s after going solo in 1992.)

Their voices melded beautifully, but the women themselves — only 18 years apart in age — weren’t always in harmony. As they have both admitted, their different personalities could spark friction. “There was a tremendous amount of love there; a lot of drama but a lot of love as well. It was definitely a paradox,” says Wynonna, who carried the pain of having to keep her mother’s severe depression largely hidden from the public for years. “My mother had an illness, she had a disease. I kept the secret, and I was devastated by that.”

Another secret added tension to their dynamic. When Wynonna was 30 and pregnant with the older child she shares with ex-husband Arch Kelley, her son Elijah, 31, she learned in a therapy session with her sister, actress Ashley Judd, 58, and Naomi that Michael Ciminella — the man she called “Dad” — was not her biological father. “I just remember going through such a depression about it: ‘I have everything, and here I am, not knowing who my birth father is,’ ” Wynonna says.

Her biological dad was a man named Charles Jordan, who dated Naomi when they were teenagers. “She was very much in love with him, and they were just too young…. She got pregnant, and that’s that. Back in 1963 that just didn’t happen without there being consequences that were intense,” says Wynonna.

Naomi and Charles split soon after, and she began dating Ciminella while she was still pregnant. She and Ciminella wed, and he raised the baby as his own, though Wynonna said last year she always had the impression he “didn’t like me.” (Wynonna and Ciminella have been estranged for a decade, according to Moser.)

Wynonna is still unsure why Naomi kept her true parentage a secret for so long. “I have forgiven her as much as possible. You don’t forget. But I’ve wondered a million times why she didn’t tell me. I carry a great deal of anger about that at times,” she says. “And then other times I totally accept it. It’s part of my story. It’s what helps us write good songs.”

Indeed, “Girl Who Could Sing,” a ballad from the new album, dives into that topic. “Now the middleman’s gone / All the answers died with her too,” she sings about Naomi. Wynonna is also unable to get answers from Jordan: He died in 2000 before she had the courage to connect with him. But she has since become “close” with Jordan’s son Michael, her half brother, whom she reached out to six years ago. “I’m thrilled to say that it turned out that I have a whole new family,” she says.

Elsewhere on The Hard Truth, Wynonna calls Naomi “a mama with no shame.” Could Wynonna have recorded and performed lyrics like those if Naomi were still alive? “Yes,” she says after taking a few seconds to ponder. “I think I would’ve been more determined. It’s my story, and it’s my feelings.”

Still, she concedes, “I think it would be very painful for her. Very painful. But I also know that she knows me, that I’m so honest and so up-front.”

In that spirit of honesty, Wynonna confesses her sister Ashley hasn’t heard the album either. At the moment the siblings aren’t “connected,” she says. “We’re taking a break, which all families can relate to. She’s doing her thing, and I’m doing mine.”

Wynonna says there wasn’t “one specific thing” that inspired the album. “When Mom died, I went into a dark hole of just wondering, ‘What the heck now?’ It’s been 10 years since I’ve put out a record.”

One day inspiration struck while she was talking to Moser. She told him, “I’m somewhere between hell and hallelujah,” Wynonna recalls. “I said that, and he wrote it down.” That line became part of the lyrics to “Broken and Blessed,” a song about the ebb and flow of life that Wynonna says was influenced by Naomi as well as her daughter Grace.

Another emotional track, “Drive,” is about going to visit her daughter in jail. “I set a table for two and secretly talk to you / Until I see you the next time on the outside,” Wynonna sings.

Grace has struggled with addiction and has had several brushes with the law over the years, including arrests for possession of methamphetamine, probation violation and lewd conduct. She has been incarcerated in Virginia since earlier this year after she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of driving with a suspended or revoked license following an October 2025 arrest.

“I miss her desperately,” Wynonna says of Grace, who cut off contact a year ago. Around that time, Grace claimed in an interview that she was molested by her stepfather — Wynonna’s second husband, D.R. Roach — when she was a child.

She also alleged Wynonna later forced her to go to therapy with him. After Roach was arrested in 2007 and charged with sexual battery of a minor, Wynonna filed for divorce; Roach’s victim was never publicly identified. Roach, who is listed on the Tennessee Sex Offender Registry, did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

While Wynonna declines to comment on Grace’s claim, she says she has two wishes for her daughter: that she’ll “find healing,” and that she’d “quit blaming me.” She adds, “She’s 30. There comes a point when you can’t blame anymore. You have to take a look at yourself.”

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When news broke in August that Grace was pregnant and sought a temporary release in July to give birth outside of jail, Wynonna found out along with the rest of the world.

Wynonna, who has custody of Kaliyah after adopting her, doesn’t know what will happen with Grace’s other child. “I absolutely know very little,” she admits.

This much is clear: Wynonna finds joy in raising Kaliyah and watching her romp around with her other granddaughter, Hazel (the 2-year-old girl her son Elijah, a local law enforcement officer, shares with his wife, Hailey Williams). “They are playing out in the yard, and I’m sitting there having my espresso martini and looking at them going, ‘I’m someone’s grandparent.’ It is so awesome to know that your life continues with these babies.”

Tackling the tough topics on The Hard Truth together deepened the bond between Wynonna and Moser. “Communication is everything to me, and that album has brought us together in a way that’s so intimate here,” she says, pointing to her head.

Moser agrees. “It’s actually a pretty romantic little thing,” he says. “Those were some pretty joyful, creative moments.” 

With the album’s release, Wynonna is “exhilarated and terrified” all at once, she says. “I feel an awful lot like I’m walking this really thin line that you can only get away with once in your lifetime. And it’s because I’m older. I’m just starting to really come into myself in a way that I’ve never felt before. I just feel this honesty coming that helps me to, you know, propel into the next day. I just feel so free.”

The Hard Truth is available on Friday, Oct. 2.

To watch the full interview, visit the PEOPLE App. For more from Wynonna Judd, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE on newsstands everywhere Friday.

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