Tenille Townes has revealed plans for her third studio album, The Acrobat, arriving April 10, 2026. To preview the album, Townes has shared the deeply personal title track, “The Acrobat,” a duet with acclaimed songwriter Lori McKenna. Take a listen: HERE.
Opening up about the song, Townes explained, “‘The Acrobat’ is about the slow erosion that comes from trying to become what someone else needs, constantly balancing, bending, and reshaping yourself. The quiet whisper to the character in this song that I hope people hear, is that you don’t have to contort yourself to be worthy of love. That’s what I needed to hear in my struggles with self abandonment and writing this with Lori from a channeled observer perspective helped me get back to that belief. Lori’s songwriting has deeply shaped the way I hear music and tell the truth. She is a true hero of mine and has been a compass influence since I first moved to Nashville. Writing this song with her, and feeling her presence on it as a vocalist, makes this release an incredibly meaningful, full-circle moment for me.”
McKenna echoed the sentiment, sharing, “Every time I write with Tenille, it’s like a new layer of honesty shines through her. In the case of ‘The Acrobat’, it seemed like she was almost channelling someone else. We wrote about a character we both could identify with – like she is someone we ourselves narrowly missed being. When Tenille asked me to sing this one with her, it made sense for my voice to represent the elder-knowledge in the song – but Tenille is the one pointing straight to that wisdom. I’m a big fan of the magic Tenille makes, and my favorite part is that even when you distill it down, all she’s doing is singing somebody’s truth.”
For Townes, the track also represents a turning point creatively. “The truth of this song led me to find the courage to trust my own intuition again, and to reclaim my creative autonomy in making this entire album,” she said. “It became a symbol of the leap into the great unknown, choosing to be an independent artist again without a safety net, and I’m deeply proud of this collection of songs I made in that flight path.”
Townes also dropped the track “We Could Use a Little More,” produced and written by the artist. Of the track, Tenille shares, “I think art’s job is to tell the story of the time in which we live. To keep weaving the threads of humanity in the tapestry and existence of who we are. Writing this song came from an ache I feel for the divisiveness and fear that we are experiencing in our cultural tug-a-war right now and the continued tragedies that keep unfolding from that every day. We could use a lot more love around here. More eye contact. More empathy. More understanding. More recognition for our humanness. We are living in a time where it can feel hard to remember that there is a common ground we are all standing on. But I don’t believe the headlines and agendas that polarize our stories into an ‘us’ and a ‘them’ are any match for the love that exists at the core of who we are. There’s so much noise in the world and holding on to the guitar and singing about how I feel has always been my way of still choosing hope and holding up a flashlight in the darkness. Writing is my way of standing up for the love I believe we are all made of.”
The Acrobat will also feature a collaboration with recent Grammy winners I’m With Her on “grey like Emmylou.” Additional songs were written alongside Grammy-winning writers Lori McKenna, Amy Wadge and Daniel Tashian, with several tracks written solely by Townes.
Preorder/presave ‘The Acrobat’ – HERE.
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