Nashville singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook processes grief on album "Great Television"

Elizabeth Cook is releasing her eighth studio album, Great Television, her first full-length since 2020's Aftermath. Produced by Shooter Jennings at Sunset Sound Studio 3 in Los Angeles, the 11-track record features guest turns from Wynonna Judd and Turnpike Troubadours frontman Evan Felker, and doubles as a companion piece to The Easy Kind, an IFC docudrama based on Cook's life in which she plays herself.

The album leans into advocacy for other women in country music, a theme Cook has carried since writing "Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman" nearly 20 years ago. She told Rolling Stone she once worried Nashville radio would bury the song over its title, until Loretta Lynn told her at the Grand Ole Opry, "Honey, I had nine songs banned from country radio."

Great Television is also shadowed by loss. Cook's longtime friend and fellow singer-songwriter Todd Snider died in November 2025 at 59 from complications of pneumonia, and she said his absence outweighs every other hardship the record processes. The two had a decades-long habit of trading emails and meeting up for what she called "summits" to talk through music and life.

Some of the material traces back further. "The Easy Kind," featuring Judd, was written a decade ago about a low period following a stay in rehab, and the album's opener, "Sunset Promenade," is built from voicemails Cook saved from three women in her life, including fellow artists Ashley Monroe and Chelle Rose.

Great Television is out now, joining the rest of the week's arrivals on the release calendar, and extends the run of country songwriting Cook has built over a 27-year career.