Ashley McBryde Brings ‘Martha Divine’ to ‘The Ellen Degeneres Show’ [Watch]
Ashley McBryde made her performance debut on The Ellen Degeneres Show this week, offering up her current single, "Martha Divine."
Appearing alongside a full band, the singer reinvigorated the full-throttle, sinister energy of the song — a rock-tinged murder ballad about a woman who exacts revenge on the woman she finds out is having an extramarital affair with her dad.
In keeping with those dark themes — and the song's cinematic music video, which is set in a rural motel room — McBryde's performance was backed by a screen that featured flashing images of a forest at night, interspersed with a glowing, neon "Motel" sign.
"Martha Divine" is the second single off of McBryde's latest album, Never Will. That project came out in the spring of 2020, towards the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike some other artists who were in the middle of album release roll-outs (such as Luke Bryan and Margo Price), McBryde chose not to postpone the release date for Never Will.
"When we released Never Will, we kept our original April 2020 release date because people needed music then and we need music now!" she says in a press release. "However, there was a small part of me that was a little sad that these songs may not get the time or attention they deserve as a body of work because of that timing."
Fortunately, she goes on to say, that hasn't gone on to be the case: On the contrary, her sophomore album has afforded her some of her biggest career success to date. The project's first single, "One Night Standards," has been her biggest commercial success, earning RIAA Gold certification and becoming a Top 10 country radio hit.
McBryde is also among the Country Radio Seminar's 2021 New Faces of Country Music. Never Will is nominated for Best Country Album at the upcoming 2021 Grammy Awards.