Broken Branches

Dierks Bentley’s 11th studio album finds the long-time country hitmaker in a reflective place. The superstar tells Apple Music that the title Broken Branches represents, in part, the tight-knit music community he’s become part of since beginning his career, and how that interconnectedness is essential to his artistry and to his personal wellbeing. “We’re all broken branches out of the family tree,” he says. “We’ve created our little community here in Nashville of singers and songwriters and dreamers and schemers, and it can take a toll on you when you don’t have that family support around.” (In tandem with the record, Bentley launched the Broken Branches Fund, a partnership with Music Health Alliance that provides artists and other music industry professionals with mental health resources.) Broken Branches opens with “Cold Beer Can”, a lighthearted but tender collaboration with Stephen Wilson Jr. that uses wordplay to illustrate how sharing a drink can create connection. “Jesus Loves Me” interpolates the classic hymn of the same name to anchor a breakup song about finding redemption after heartbreak. That’s a far cry from the inspiration for “She Hates Me”, another breakup song with unexpected roots—the 2001 Puddle of Mudd post-grunge hit “She Hates Me”, whose unmistakable opening riff is repurposed here on Bentley’s more PG tale of love lost. Other highlights include the Miranda Lambert collaboration “Never You”, a long-awaited duet from the pair that makes the most of her singular voice, and the title track, a fun and freewheeling collaboration with living legend John Anderson and relative newcomer Riley Green. Below, Bentley shares insight into several key tracks. “She Hates Me” “I was writing with Stephen Wilson Jr. and just wrote a serious song, and we were doing a little thing in Nashville. We’re all getting together writing for a couple days. I was getting ready to go work with some other guys on another song, and that popped up in between, when we were tak