First Single “Kathleen” Arrives Today, Following the Momentum of Last Fall’s “Steppin’ Outside” Featuring Tyler Childers

Celebrated singer-songwriter Cory Branan has spent the better part of two decades carving out a career that refuses easy categorization. Blending punk grit, Southern storytelling, folk intimacy and heartland rock into something unmistakably his own, the Memphis native now returns with You’ll Live, his seventh studio album and second release for Blue Élan Records, arriving August 21.

Alongside the announcement, Branan releases the album’s first focus track, “Kathleen,” a reflective and emotionally unguarded song that captures the raw honesty at the center of You’ll Live. The release builds on the momentum of last fall’s “Steppin’ Outside,” Branan’s collaboration with longtime friend and former tourmate Tyler Childers, which offered an early glimpse into the spirit of the new record.

Click here to listen to "Kathleen".

Produced by Anthony da Costa and recorded in Nashville, You’ll Live is a collection of songs gathered over nearly 20 years — tracks that never quite fit the albums Branan was making at the time, but ultimately found new life together here. Rather than forcing a singular narrative, the album embraces its contradictions, unfolding as ten self-contained stories tied together by Branan’s fearless songwriting and deeply human perspective.

Rolling Stone once described Branan as “a country boy with a punk-rock heart,” while NPRpraised his “career stacked with lonesome country anthems to life on the road, delivered in a voice that’s pleasantly weathered.” That tension between grit and grace continues to define his music. Raised on everything from Top 40 radio and MTV to church music, Hill Country blues, heavy metal, John Prine, and The Replacements, Branan has long treated genre as secondary to the emotional truth of the song itself.

“This is an orphanage,” Branan says of You’ll Live, referring to the long-shelved songs finally finding a home together.

That spirit runs throughout the album. There’s the sprawling historical ballad “The Wreck of the Sultana,” the existential haze of “The Nothing I Know,” and the punk-fueled burst of “Teeny Says.” Meanwhile, songs like “Kathleen” and “Ricochet” wrestle with what remains after illusions fade and reality settles in — themes Branan delivers with equal parts humor, heartache, and hard-earned wisdom.

For Branan, there’s never been a strict line between styles or eras, only songs demanding to be heard in their own way. You’ll Live captures that philosophy fully, offering a portrait of an artist still searching for something true in the fragments.

With You’ll Live, Cory Branan once again proves that the songs that don’t fit neatly anywhere are often the ones that last the longest.