Album Review – Molly Tuttle’s “So Long Little Miss Sunshine”

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Adult Contemporary Pop (#N.A.) and Indie rock-inspired Americana on the Country DSS.


If you’re a traditional bluegrass fan, is it a sad development that the Millennial Queen of Bluegrass has gone pop? Yes, it is. Is producer Jay Joyce officially now the reigning Country Music Antichrist, and deserves to get chlamydia from the Tyler Childers koala? Yes, he does. But is Molly Tuttle’s new album So Long Little Miss Sunshine as bad as you feared when she first announced it? No, it’s not. Disappointing as the whole situation might be for some, this turned out better than expected.

For years we pined for Molly Tuttle to lean into her bluegrass roots. As she was racking up IBMA trophies for Guitarist of the Year, her solo stuff was much more folk and singer/songwriter in scope. Then in 2022, we got our wish when Molly launched her band Golden Highway, and released the album Crooked Tree. It won a Grammy. So did the next one, 2023’s City of Gold. All was right in the bluegrass world. But in the debut song from her bluegrass era called “She’ll Change,” Tuttle warned us,

“One woman, many wonders. One road, many ways.
Just when you think you know her, she’ll change.”

That’s exactly what Molly Tuttle has done once again, leaning very heavily into pop sounds, writing, and production, saddling up with producer Jay Joyce who is known for putting that commercial sheen and polish on mainstream country songs, and releasing a record that won’t compete for a bluegrass Grammy, that’s for sure. And it all happens at a time when bluegrass and more rootsy music is in a popular resurgence.

In some respects, you can’t blame Molly for wanting to try something different. Despite the critical acclaim of her bluegrass moment, for whatever reason, it just wasn’t seeing the uplift you expected. Despite standing on her head out on stage every night and her kick ass band, she was still out on the road opening for Old Crow Medicine Show, and playing late afternoon slots at festivals. Maybe patience would have shown greater dividends, but that wasn’t for certain.

Also when you master bluegrass at 15, what’s the challenge? Molly Tuttle has always seemed somewhat bored with conventional bluegrass, and always searching for other avenues to explore. For all we know, she’s always harbored dreams of being a pop star. She should be allowed to do whatever she wants, even if it feels like a sin that she’s not leaning into her undeniable strengths as a bluegrass musician.

In truth, what Molly Tuttle is doing on So Long Little Miss Sunshine isn’t too far afield from what other women of a bluegrass origin like Sarah Jarosz and Alison Krauss have done in the past. Though it’s fair to characterize the work as “pop” in total, there are a lot of acoustic textures to the album that are more indicative of the contemporary folk universe as opposed to pop.


There are also multiple songs that feel like leftover inventory from Molly’s bluegrass era. Given a different treatment, they would be considered bluegrass songs. “Rosalee” is the most obvious. It’s pretty much a straight ahead bluegrass murder ballad, just with a slightly more modern tone. “Golden State of Mind” and others could have easily gone in a more bluegrass direction.

Yes, this is a pop album. But Molly Tuttle was up front about that from the very start, so this is not a scenario where someone is calling something bluegrass or country when it clearly isn’t. Also, if she was out there trying to compete with the Taylor Swift’s and Chappell Roan’s of the world, Molly would immediately have become a small fish in a very big sea. But So Long Little Miss Sunshine is much more adult contemporary. This is an AAA radio play album, and in that world, it could perform very well.

That said, there are some rather cringey moments, and some that are curiously cliché from Molly, beyond having to swallow the bitter pill of Molly moving on from bluegrass. The album’s big, saccharine single “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark” makes you wince when she issues the cliché line, “Ooh you got a certain je ne sais quoi,” and there are similar lines that lurk on this album. “The Highway Knows” could have been a killer road song, but the bouncy, beach-like rhythm and melody just remove all guts from the effort.

Also, despite the infectious flourishes of Molly’s acoustic textures throughout the album, not really once is she allowed to take a serious, extended solo. Everything is so stylized, structured, and overproduced as only Jay Joyce can do. But usually Jay Joyce screws up country albums by trying to inject “pop sensibilities” into the production. In this instance, he’s injecting pop sensibilities onto pop production. And though you want to hate it, in moments, you find yourself admitting that it works, for pop at least.

If you’re trying to make a pop album and it’s not infectious and fluffy, you fail. So for what it is, So Long Little Miss Sunshine is a success. Does that mean that bluegrass/country fans can somehow be satisfied with this outcome? Not really, because pop/AAA’s gain is their loss. And this loss is major because Molly Tuttle is an amazing, landmark, generational talent that can sell the beauty and power of bluegrass music to the next generation of young women wanting to pick up guitars, fiddles, mandolins, and banjos.

But Molly Tuttle warned us in 2021, and we should remember it again in this moment: “One woman, many wonders. One road, many ways. Just when you think you know her, she’ll change.”

Maybe it will be this more pop moment that will bring the attention to Molly Tuttle she’s always deserved. And once that momentum is captured, she will return to bluegrass, and with much more promising prospects behind her. A bluegrass fan can only wish. But for now, she’s gone from her golden era to her era of “not so” little miss sunshine. We’ll have to sit back and see just how bright it shines, or if the luster fades.

(rating withheld due to the album not residing in the country realm)

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