Ok Cowgirl have put out Rock N Roll Ruined My Life, the last song released from Rhinestone Cowgirl before the album itself arrives. The Brooklyn band, led by singer and songwriter Leah Lavigne, releases the record on 21 August 2026 through Easy Does It Records. Under the Radar covered the track on 19 August.
It is the band's second album. Their first, Couldn't Save Us From My Gut, came out in 2024. Under the Radar wrote that the new one draws on the songwriters Lavigne takes after, naming Sheryl Crow and Bruce Springsteen, and sets that against sharp grooves and tangled guitar layers.
Alex Farrar produced it, working with the band once again. His other credits include records for Wednesday, Indigo De Souza and MJ Lenderman.
Rock N Roll Ruined My Life is the fifth song out ahead of the album, after It Wasn't You, It Was The Feeling, Prepared to Lose, God Made a Farmer and Cruise The Town. All of them arrived this year, and the album's date sits in the release calendar with the rest of the week's indie and rock releases, among them Perennial's Emma Peel and gash's data master.
The track opens the record. Under the Radar described it building on a steady rhythm section and rising layers of guitar before the tension it has stored up lets go into distorted guitars and loud vocals, with Lavigne starting in a wistful, confessional register and ending somewhere much bigger.
What the song is about is the cost of staying in music. "Lately I've been thinking we're all dreamers / Some of us just on less traveled roads," Lavigne sings, before a line about being seen as a failed singer by people who have not seen what she has.
Lavigne said she wrote it for herself and for friends who have struggled to justify staying on a precarious path, and that as an artist with a day job she went through stretches of resenting music for eating all her time-off requests and keeping her in work without healthcare. The hook, she said, is tongue in cheek, and singing it reminds her every time how untrue it is. "Music is the most fulfilling and joyful part of my life," she said.
The facts
- Rock N Roll Ruined My Life came out on 19 August 2026.
- It opens the album Rhinestone Cowgirl.
- Rhinestone Cowgirl is out 21 August 2026 on Easy Does It Records.
- Ok Cowgirl is a Brooklyn band led by Leah Lavigne.
- Their debut, Couldn't Save Us From My Gut, came out in 2024.
- Alex Farrar produced the record.
- Earlier singles included Prepared to Lose and God Made a Farmer.
- Lavigne says the song is about the precarity of a musician's life.
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