Pete Yorn has hit numerous milestones lately. First, his acting debut in Martin Scorcese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, then his 9th top 10 AAA hit, a landmark birthday and now his tenth studio album. The Hard Way (via Shelly Music) is a country-folk blend featuring Yorns’ raw vocals, cinematic strings and vivid, confessional lyrics. The record was co-written and produced by Josh Gudwin. The stunning and succinct 25-minute album features the introspective “Someday, Someday,” which Yorn debuted on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Good Morning America in January or 2024, and “Real Good Love,” which he performed on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. Pete performed the title track on Jimmy Kimmel Live in January of 2025. The Hard Way bears proof that it is no wonder SPIN aptly lauds Yorn as “one of his generation’s best songwriters.”
Pete says, "I was face to face with my own mortality, and that forces you to rise above it and figure out new ways to look at life and change the ways you react to things. It's not a bummer record, the title comes from [the idea that] change is hard, but [if you] commit to something and if you want to make your life better for everyone around you, including yourself, you have no choice but to do that. It's a celebratory record, it makes me excited and proud of being able to rise above a lot of adversity in my personal life."
A New Jersey native equally indebted to Bruce Springsteen’s blue-collar introspection and Lou Reed’s deadpan stream-of-consciousness, Yorn first broke out in 2001 with his extraordinary Columbia Records debut, Musicforthemorningafter. Hailed by NPR as one the year’s finest, the album garnered RIAA Platinum certification on the strength of its universal acclaim as well as Yorn’s relentless appetite for the road. Rolling Stone praised it as “atmospheric, gently lit by sunlight and regret,” while The Guardian called it “sublime,” and The AV Club deemed it “the first chapter in a long and exciting career.” In the decades that followed, Yorn would go on to solidify his status as a songwriters’ songwriter, releasing nine more critically-acclaimed solo albums and collaborating in the studio with everyone from Frank Black and Peter Buck to Liz Phair and Scarlett Johansson (Yorn and Johansson’s joint 2009 release, ‘Break Up,’ went Platinum in France). With a voice Consequence of Sound described as “ruined and forlorn,” Yorn earned performances on Letterman, Fallon, Kimmel, Ellen, and more, as well dates with artists as varied as R.E.M., Coldplay, My Morning Jacket, and The Chicks, and festival slots from Coachella and Bonnaroo to Glastonbury and Austin City Limits.
In 2019, he released Caretakers, featuring the top 2 AAA single “Calm Down.” The New Yorker Magazine praised the album’s “dreamy synths-and-strings jangle” and in AllMusic’s 4 star review, they described the music as “lush yet spare, tuneful but not forceful, cinematic yet small scale...an appealing blend that sets it apart from most other albums in 2019."
The Hard Way follows his 2022 LP HAWAII, which earned critical praise from SPIN, American Songwriter, Paste and more. Other recent releases include Pete Yorn Sings the Classics, the artist’s first ever collection of cover songs, Pete Yorn Live At The Troubadour, and The Trilogy: Morning, Day, And Night, a 5 CD box set including the complete audio downloads from his Veeps full album live streams of albums musicforthemorningafter, Day I Forgot and Nightcrawler.
