Chevel Shepherd will have a new single in 2023, honoring one of her biggest musical heroes. The Season 15 winner of The Voice announced on social media that “Lookin’ For Loretta,” honoring Loretta Lynn and her timeless music, will be her next single.
“After a long wait I’m finally excited to announce that my song ‘Lookin’ for Loretta’ is going to be released February 17th,” Shepherd writes. “Thank you to everybody who made this possible I couldn’t have done it without you. This song is so special to me and I’m excited to share it with all of you.”
“Lookin’ for Loretta” might be about Lynn, one of Shepherd’s biggest role models, but the song namechecks several other artists as well, including Patty Loveless, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Tammy Wynette.
The New Mexico native draws a lot of influence from Lynn as she embarks on her own career, both in her music and her life. Shepherd was inspired by Lynn, as well as other artists, in her Everybody’s Got a Story EP, released in 2021
“I love Loretta,” Shepherd previously told Everything Nash. “She’s definitely one of my favorites. I look up to her as a musician and as a person. She’s always stayed true to herself, and never strayed away from that. And then I look up to Tanya Tucker, Gretchen Wilson, The Chicks. I look up to all of them. There are a lot of musical influences on my record that stem from them, because that’s the music that I grew up listening to, but I always make it my own. But my influence, my biggest one would have to be Loretta. And I also love Dolly as well.”
Everybody’s Got a Story came out three years after Shepherd’s win on The Voice. The project included songs written by Kacey Musgraves, Shane McAnally, Brandy Clark and more,
“Right after I won The Voice, I had been wanting to put out music so bad, and I had been waiting so long,” Shepherd said. “I recorded it in the end of 2019, around then, and I was just so proud of it. And I was like, ‘I wish this would come out tomorrow because I love every song so much.’ I love the whole project, and it was something that I have been wanting to do for so long, my whole entire life. And so finally putting together a project that’s being released for people to hear all of it, the whole package, I’m really, really excited.”
All of Shepherd’s music is available at Chevel.org.
