“‘All I Had to Do’ is a very personal song that takes its cues more from Hejira than the Judds, but I love it just the same,” Kirke tells PEOPLE
Photo credit Zackery Michael
Single artwork credit Courtesy of Third Man Records
Lola Kirke is exploring the end of a romance.
Less than two months after her latest album Lady for Sale dropped in April, the 31-year-old actress and singer-songwriter’s new acoustic ballad “All I Had to Do” premieres exclusively with PEOPLE.
Released via Jack White’s Third Man Records, “All I Had to Do” finds Kirke pondering a past relationship and wondering how it could’ve ended differently over a calming guitar melody inspired by Joni Mitchell’s 1976 album Hejira.
“On the way to discovering the more ’80s/’90s country sound I wanted to capture on Lady for Sale, producer Austin Jenkins and I experimented with other inspirations too,” Kirke tells PEOPLE in a statement. “‘All I Had to Do’ is a very personal song that takes its cues more from Hejira than The Judds, but I love it just the same. I am so happy to get to share it with you all.”
“You could fight for me / There’s other ways this could be,” sings the Gone Girl star. “But you say, respectfully / You can’t fight with being free / And you want that for me.”
“All I Had to Do” arrives shortly after Lady for Sale, but don’t expect the track to signal a new album on the way from Kirke just yet. “I wrote ‘All I Had to Do’ while writing the album Lady for Sale,” she says. “I loved it so much, but it just didn’t feel like the right fit among the other songs.”
Lady for Sale marked Kirke’s second full-length album following 2018’s Heart Head West and third project overall, as she released the four-track EP in 2016.
Photo credit Zackery Michael
Single artwork credit Courtesy of Third Man Records
Upon her sophomore album’s release in April, the performer spoke to Rolling Stone about venturing into country music despite her father Simon’s history as a rock drummer for bands including Bad Company and Free.
“I think I was just drawn to how easy the songs were initially because there were three chords or whatever. Literally, I was like, ‘Oh, I can play these,'” Kirke told the outlet at the time. “And through that ease, discovered a deeper love of country music.”
She continued, “Also, there’s a lot of parallels with being an actress and being a country singer or singing country. So many of the women in country music, they’re telling these stories and embodying characters and also wearing costumes in a really incredible way. There was all this room for drama within country that was really exciting to me as an actor.”
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