Elizabeth Cook Shares New Single “Girls of Atomic City”

Today, revered country singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook released a new single, “Girls of Atomic City,” off forthcoming album Great Television. The new studio album, which promises a collision of country and rock & roll, was produced by Shooter Jennings and will be released on August 14 via Thirty Tigers.

Listen to “Girls of Atomic City” HERE
Pre-save/order Great Television HERE

“Girls of Atomic City” is an empowering, rock-country earworm that illuminates the type of lives typically sidelined in the dominant media narrative by highlighting the independence of the women who worked on the Manhattan Project. Elizabeth sings, “their mamas just could not believe, They work and pay their own rent.”

“A while back I learned about the women who worked on the Manhattan Project, and it was such a fascinating a-ha moment for me,” says Cook. “People tend to think about the atomic bomb in very black-and-white terms, but for a lot of those women, it opened up a whole new world where they got to leave home for the first time and make their own money. It was such a major cultural shift.”

Recorded with Cook’s live band at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, Great Television features collaborations with country music royalty Wynonna Judd, and marks a commanding new addition to a formidable catalog. The Florida-bred, Nashville-based singer-songwriter’s first new project since 2020’s Aftermath, the album finds Cook on a mission to illuminate the type of lives typically sidelined in the dominant media narrative and the emotional truth buried within long-overlooked histories. Cook maps the hidden corners of the American experience from both a deeply personal perspective and a perspective of reflection on historical events and their ripple effects.

The LP arrives alongside the theatrical release of The Easy Kind—a narrative film inspired by Cook’s life as an artist who has long resisted Nashville convention. Starring Elizabeth alongside David Letterman, Karen Allen, Susie Essman, Melissa Jackson, and Charles Esten, the film blends fact and fiction to trace her remarkable journey from singing in her parents’ band at age four to performing at the Grand Ole Opry more than 400 times. Directed by Katy Chevigny, The Easy Kind offers an intimate portrait of Cook’s uncompromising artistic life through candid home moments, live performances, and deeply personal storytelling. Watch the trailer HERE.

For more than two decades, Elizabeth Cook has operated outside the machinery of mainstream country while staking her claim as one of American music’s most vital storytellers. Triumphs like 2007’s Balls, a major creative breakthrough featuring her Americana Music Awards-nominated, career-defining anthem “Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman,” 2010’s Welder, made with legendary producer Don Was and selected for Rolling Stone’s list of the year’s best albums, and 2016’s Billboard-charting Exodus of Venus, one of several of Cook’s LPs glowingly reviewed by seminal rock critic Robert Christgau, have cemented her reputation.

Great Television unearths the emotional truth buried within long-overlooked histories. Most notably on “Thiokol Tripwire,” which embodies a heavy-hearted intensity as Cook recounts the story of a 1971 explosion at a Georgia chemical plant. “The plant was making tripwires for the Vietnam War, and it was the only place in the area that would hire Black women,” she explains. “It was a very dangerous job, but it gave those women an opportunity in a town that wouldn’t hire them anywhere else, and represented real economic progress for their community. And then when the explosion happened, it was mostly Black women who lost their lives.”

Taken together, Great Television and The Easy Kind reaffirm the extraordinary legacy Cook has forged by following her own vision wherever it leads. Whether excavating forgotten histories or reflecting on her own life, Cook remains devoted to uncovering the humanity beneath the surface of every tale she tells. “I’m always trying to serve a bigger story than my own,” she says. “But it’s always a thin veil—it’s all autobiographical on some level, or I wouldn’t be driven to do it. For me that’s the best of both worlds: getting to express my truth, while also sharing someone else’s story.”

Tracklist
1 - Sunset Promenade
2 - Girls of Atomic City
3 - Thiokol Tripwire
4 - Okeechobee Mud
5 - Razorwire Wall
6 - The Easy Kind
7 - Caldonia & The Love Convoy
8 - In Your Veins
9 - 19th Nervous Breakdown
10 - Feverfew
11 - Lightly

“The Easy Kind” Premiere and Q&A Dates
Jul 15 Wed - Houston, TX - River Oaks Theatre
Jul 21 Tue - Los Angeles, CA - Laemmle NoHo 7
Jul 23 Thu - Portland, OR - Cinema 21
Jul 25 Sat - Seattle, WA - Tasveer Film Center

Upcoming Shows
Oct 4 Sun - Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, San Francisco, CA
Oct 9 Fri - Pelham, TN - CaveFest 2026