Tanner Adell Talks New Album, Beyonc�s Cowboy Carter, and Hangout Festival Performance

Tanner Adell is crowded into her dressing room trailer's bathroom, dolloping on her signature lavender eyeshadow. She's wearing an oversized t-shirt with animated frogs across the front, her hair in two braided pigtails, bunny slippers on her feet. It feels like watching your best friend get ready in her dorm room before a fun night out. It might be one of those memorable nights at the honky-tonk that'll surely require a post-party debrief.

"I'm so glad we got to do this with someone who knows who I am," she says with a smile and a welcoming Southern drawl as she draws on two precise liquid eyeliner wings. Adell still does her own makeup, not only because it's financially sound, but because she has yet to find someone who does it the way she likes. "Sometimes people show up, and they're like, 'So, who are you?' and I have to say, 'Well, this is a movement, and you're obviously not on the train,' so it's good to have you here."

2024 has been a movement for the musician, who has seen her star rise over the past few years through a combination of hard work, TikTok virality, and a Beyoncé endorsement. Now, she’s about to go onstage at Hangout Music Festival in Gulf Shores, Alabama, further cementing her star power as a performer with signature style and hits to spare. She’s still grappling with that growth.

"Every time I go out [to perform], I'm like, 'What if no one's there? Oh my God, what if no one shows up?'" she says. The night before her debut at the festival, Adell was in Atlanta performing at Country Music Television's Hot Prospects Series. "I'm behind the stage, and I hear them say, 'Tanner Adell is here tonight,'" she recalls of the Atlanta show. "It was like a wall of screaming. I ended up playing to a ton of people that night. Atlanta showed out, and the CMT Hot Prospects team said it was the biggest turnout they had ever seen."

Adell's faith sits at the epicenter of her being. She knows she was put here on this earth for a reason: to make music. "I always get a little bit choked up and a little bit emotional," she says about being on stage. "It really doesn't matter how many people are there. I know there will always be one person who needed to see me that day."

Tanner Adell does eyelashes in her dressing room at Hangout Music Festival

Various sunglasses accessories award ribbons and ephemera in Tanner Adell's dressing room

Tanner Adell's dressing room trailer at Hangout

Tanner Adell is a country music fan's wild card. She was adopted from her birthplace of Lexington, Kentucky, and raised between Manhattan Beach, California, and Star Valley, Wyoming. She isn't a traditional cowgirl, necessarily, but she’s a Southern dynamite all the same.

As a biracial Black woman with white adoptive parents, Adell has spent most of her life knowing what it means to be unable to check just one box. She exists as a multitude of origins and foundations, perfectly built to place her here, onstage, singing her version of the cowboy blues.

"I'm not just another girl making country music," she tells Teen Vogue. "I'm opening up a lane for people like you and me to come in and feel welcome here. I don't belong in boxes. I'm the poster child for [people who say] 'I hate country music, but I listen to Tanner Adell.' … I don't want to have to feel like I have to follow any rules when it comes to music.”

Adell got to see firsthand what it means to stand up against an industry hellbent on pigeonholing Black artists. This past March, she was featured on two songs, "Blackbiird" and "Ameriican Requiem," on Beyoncé's album Cowboy Carter. An album in which Beyoncé herself reminded the world: "This ain't a country album; this is a Beyoncé album." The collab was the best kept secret; even her parents couldn't know until the day it came out. The Beatles’ original "Blackbird" is Adell's father's favorite song, so sharing a massive milestone in her career with him meant the world.

Similar to the boundary-pushing Americana-inspired Beyoncé album, Adell is setting out to prove there isn't just one way to be a country artist.

"Thank you, Sister B, for shedding that light on me," Adell says. "I love country music, and I respect country music. A lot of the time, though, the listeners tend to put country music in a box. They don't like when people mix country music with their own personal style."

Her mixture of rap verses, Southern twang, and bolstering ballads — with her guitar and banjo always in tow — lends itself to the Western dream world she's trying to build, a dream world all her own.

"My story has never been heard and never been told," she says. "And it's helped create the sound that I make. There are people out there, like myself, that have lived different experiences that are also country."

Tanner Adell with a banjo at Hangout Music Festival

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