Tift Merritt Is Back to Sing Love Into the World

Tift Merritt was on tour in Europe with Jason Isbell in 2017 when her career — successful by any standard — stopped making sense.

Her daughter, Jean, then nearly 2 years old, was with her and having a blast. But “she needed roots,” Merritt recalls, and life on the road couldn’t provide that. 

So when the tour ended, Merritt let it all go. She stepped away from the cycle of touring and releasing albums, knowing she would likely fall off the music industry’s radar. Merritt and Jean moved back to her hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, and she set about rethinking how she could channel her creativity.

Amid her certainty that she was doing the right thing for her daughter, there was, she admits, some sadness around putting the brakes on what she’d worked so hard to build in the previous two decades. And a lot of fear. She was afraid she’d lose her creative spark, her chops, her momentum. But as she readies to return with new album Sugar, out June 26 on One Riot, she’s come to realize that what happened was just the opposite. 

“My creativity did not stop,” she says. “It turned out that it was ready to blossom in a lot of different ways that aren't contained in the traditional music business format. So it ended up being such a wonderful lesson of you think you know what you want, but life has something better in store for you.”