On their collaborative album “Send a Prayer My Way,” Julien Baker and TORRES reimagine country music through personal experiences. In the album, which was released April 18, a pedal steel guitar, banjo and fiddle accompany lyrics about queer love, addiction, shame and devotion. Created by two queer musicians who are intimately familiar with homophobia and discrimination in the South, “Send a Prayer My Way” redefines Southern musical traditions like country.
“Send a Prayer My Way” often feels like a conversation between the two artists’ styles. Baker’s lyricism leans spiritual and searching, while TORRES’s delivery is bold, tongue-in-cheek and theatrical. The artists’ queer Southern identities are central to the album’s narrative, and rather than distance themselves from tradition, Baker and TORRES make country music their own as they sing about love, loss and family. While they use language and motifs from Southern traditions, the two artists alter the narrative to fit their own personal stories.
“Tuesday,” for instance, recounts a doomed queer relationship strained by a conservative family. The song’s melody is deceptively sweet, the instrumentation twangy and familiar, and yet the lyrics cut deep. “I took a knife / To the paper-thin skin on my arms … Tuesday, now I hardly think of you / But when I do, I only think of shame,” the two artists sing. The track is a portrait of love stifled by shame, and the silence that follows.
“No Desert Flower” is slow and serious. The music remains steady, building slowly under lyrics about loyalty and what it means to show up for someone and choose to stay even when things aren’t easy. The sound is filled with soft harmonies and a slow, steady beat, and the way it talks about love breaks from heteronormative views of romance. “No Desert Flower” promises devotion in the face of hardship. The lyrics are stark and modern, illustrating that the best love is one that is gritty, not idealized.
But Baker and TORRES diverge from melancholy in “Sugar in the Tank,” which is playful and irreverent, poking fun at stereotypes and expectations. It’s a song that knows how to laugh at pain without diminishing it.
“Send a Prayer My Way” is a great album because it feels lived in. This isn’t an album made simply to line the artists’ pockets. Instead, it’s the result of years of lived experience and the reflections of two queer artists reckoning with the forces that shaped them.
Each of the album’s songs does something different, but they all feel like they belong together. Some are sad, some are funny and some are quiet — but what connects them is how real they feel. Nothing is dressed up too much. The album is full of emotion, but never feels fake or forced. The way Baker and TORRES use country music to talk about their experiences as queer individuals from the South makes these songs feel personal and fresh.
Through embracing the musical traditions of the South while putting their own spin on the genre, Baker and TORRES show that country music has more room for artists and experimentation than its gatekeepers would suggest. The pair created a stunning record that feels both familiar and defiant, a homecoming and a reinvention. “Send A Prayer My Way” serves as a reminder that music genres are not set in stone. Baker and TORRES prove that traditions can be reclaimed and reimagined.
Summer Shi is a senior staff writer and illustrator for the Brown Daily Herald. She is from Dublin, California and is currently studying design engineering and philosophy.
