Any country music fan price their salt has known all of the words to Jo Dee Messina’s “Heads Carolina, Tails California” because it debuted in 1996 — and in addition wondering where exactly she’s been for the last decade or so.
Messina hasn’t exactly been hiding — she’s toured continually and made occasional appearances at events just like the CMA Awards — however it’s been 12 years since she released her last album, 2014’s Me. Now, she’s back with Bridges, a set of songs inspired by the whole lot she’s been through these days. And that, because it seems, is so much.
“I became a single parent. I lost my mother, after which recently, I lost my father, after which I handled cancer,” Messina explained in an exclusive interview with Us Weekly. “And so there’s been loads of shake-up in the traditional day-to-day, right? And oh, did I mention I actually have two kids? So, raising men and looking out on the world through their eyes and attempting to guide them — that’s a full-time gig.”
In spite of everything that upheaval, it wouldn’t be surprising if Bridges veered into melancholy, however it never does. As an alternative, Messina focuses on hope, love and the importance of living each day without regrets. Within the song “Days You Don’t Get Back,” for instance, Messina imagines telling her 17-year-old self to “tap the brakes and lose that fake ID.” She says it’s considered one of the primary songs she wrote when she decided to get back within the studio.
“That one I’m like, ‘I would like to write down a song from where I’m immediately,’” she recalled of the track, which she cowrote with Florida Georgia Line’s Tyler Hubbard. “Don’t wish away the times you don’t get back. You mostly want what’s next. You wish your license. Then you need to be 21, then you need to be 25, then you definitely desire a family. You’re all the time in search of the following thing, but you could have to learn to like where you’re at.”
Margo Price has lived in Nashville for greater than 20 years, but she’s never recorded a full album there, despite its abundant supply of legendary studios. For her fifth LP, Hard Headed Woman, she decided to vary that. “It was simply because I all the time felt like such an outsider in Nashville,” Price, 42, exclusively told […]
Messina became a household name through the late ’90s when female country stars like Martina McBride, Faith Hill and Shania Twain dominated the radio, but younger fans may know her from Cole Swindell’s “She Had Me at Heads Carolina,” which references Messina’s biggest hit, or last yr’s “Lesson in Leavin’” cover by Sierra Ferrell and Nikki Lane. (Messina’s version of the latter song was also a canopy; the unique appeared on Dottie West’s 1979 album Special Delivery.)
Messina is flattered by the love, but she’s also not able to see herself as an elder stateswoman of the industry.
Jo Dee Messina and Ella Langley speak in Nashville on March 19, 2026. Jason Kempin/Getty Images
“I still feel like I’m considered one of them,” she explained. “We see one another and do stuff together, functions and whatever. And I’m hanging with them — I don’t remove myself in that aspect. And I just like to be a component of the get-together.”
She does, nevertheless, feel a bit of nostalgia for the era when she was first starting out. Because whilst country music reaches ever more impressive heights, the industry itself — at the least in Nashville — can feel a bit of hollowed out.
“I miss living in Nashville, going to Music Row, and there being houses of songwriters, one after the opposite one after the opposite one,” she told Us. “Now we’ve got these big buildings, however it was once, ‘Hey, walk down the road. That’s where so-and-so writes, that’s where so-and-so writes, oh, that’s where so-and-so records.’”
It’s easier than ever to place your music out into the world, but Messina thinks “the accessibility of a relationship with people within the industry” was a bit of bit higher back then. “Like, to get someone to select up a phone today is like wrestling an alligator,” she joked. “There was once phone calls on a regular basis. I used to call my manager three or 4 times a day!”
Despite those changes, Messina is comfortable to be back and sharing her wisdom, even when it meant taking an unintentionally long break from recording.
“Jo Dee on ‘Heads Carolina’ was all about starting the journey. This one’s more like, ‘I’ve been down the road less traveled,’” she explained. “Every turn means I’ve been down multiple roads, whether it’s straight, whether it’s a turn, whether it’s whatever. And hey, look what I learned along the way in which.”
Bridges is out Friday, June 5.