The Band Perry Storms Back After 9 Years With Wild, Twisted Comeback Single “PSYCHOLOGICAL” {Exclusive}
- All Country News
- 39 minutes ago
- 4 min read
After nine years of near silence as a recording act, The Band Perry didn’t tiptoe back into country music, they kicked the door off the hinges.
Their new single, “PSYCHOLOGICAL,” is not a gentle reintroduction. It’s a velvet-lined spiral into romantic obsession, theatrical, unhinged, Southern Gothic, and unmistakably Perry. Built on a haunting piano figure and detonated by a waltzing, genre-bending arrangement, the track feels less like a comeback single and more like a statement of intent: the band is back, and they’re not interested in playing it safe.
For Kimberly Perry and Johnny Costello, the first release in nearly a decade had to hit with purpose. And a little chaos. The band sat down with All Country News to chat all about this exciting new chapter.
“This is like a chaotic love song,” Perry said, the kind you can hear through the speakers. Fittingly, the release lands around Valentine’s Day, and even more fittingly, on Friday the 13th weekend. “It was just meant to be.”
A Comeback That Chooses the Song — Not the Ego
In an era where artist credibility is often measured by writing credits, The Band Perry zigged instead of zagged. They didn’t write “PSYCHOLOGICAL.” They chose it.
And that choice was deliberate.
“The best song wins,” Perry explains, pointing back to the band’s history. One ofthe bands many hits “Better Dig Two," one of the defining country hits of the 2010s, wasn’t written by them either. It was penned by Shane McAnally, Brandy Clark, and Trevor Rosen, and it helped define their artistic identity.
“PSYCHOLOGICAL,” written by rising Nashville writers Clara Park, Grace Tyler, and Colton Venner, delivered that same lightning-bolt feeling.
“The first time I heard the chorus payoff — ‘you make me go psycho-logical’ — I was completely gone,” Perry recalls. “I was like, can we go to the studio tonight?”
What made it stick wasn’t just the hook, it was the language. The poetry. The theatricality. The emotional extremity that has always lived at the center of The Band Perry’s best work. But just as important, they heard space inside the song, room to make it theirs.
Lace, Leather, and a Little Madness
Though the demo arrived fresh, Perry wasn’t shy about tailoring the details. She pushed for lyrical adjustments that sharpened the band’s signature dramatic edge, including a pointed line tweak: “I’m out of my mind, but I don’t need no hospital.”
“That centered it over the Band Perry cliff,” she says, a fitting metaphor for a group that has always favored emotional high-wire acts over middle-of-the-road comfort.
Sonically, they layered in their Appalachian fingerprints, banjo, mandolin, and a tension between roots instrumentation and arena-sized production. With Dann Huff behind the boards, the track explodes with polished country-rock force while still preserving the band’s eerie, folk-tinged DNA.
The cover art tells the same story in a single image: antique lace draped over a title that screams instability.
“We’re very Southern Gothic in our wardrobe,” Perry says. “Black leather and gentle lace, that’s our band. It’s metaphorical and literal.” The vintage lace idea came from an antique store haul, what Perry jokingly calls a “Meemaw find” and the juxtaposition was intentional. Softness and danger. Beauty and bite. Romance and unraveling.
A Direct Shot Back to Country Radio
There was never any debate about where the comeback single belonged. No genre detours. No testing the waters.
Country radio, straight on.
“Our intention was always for the first song back to go to country radio,” Perry says. “This voice — our voice — is already familiar there. We wanted to reintroduce ourselves from the downbeat.”
Reuniting with their Big Machine family only strengthened that conviction. The team that helped build their early dominance at radio is once again in the driver’s seat, and early response, they say, has been swift and enthusiastic.
The track officially impacts radio February 17, but industry ears have already been buzzing.
Enter the Psycho Rodeo
If the record is dramatic, the live show promises to be feral.
The band has already been road-testing “PSYCHOLOGICAL” over the past month, and
Perry says it’s evolving nightly, growing teeth and legs under stage lights. The upcoming run is cheekily titled the Psycho Rodeo Tour, a name that feels like both a wink and a warning.
Johnny Costello, Perry’s husband and musical partner, provides the rodeo half of the equation. A Texas native, he’s the grounded counterweight to the theatrical storm.
It’s that self-awareness, that willingness to lean into the melodrama instead of sanding it down, that makes “PSYCHOLOGICAL” work. The Band Perry has always thrived in the space between elegance and volatility. This return doesn’t rewrite their identity, it distills it.
After nine years away, their first word back isn’t a whisper.
It’s a beautiful, unhinged scream.
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