"Southern Man "
Cecily Wilborn: New 4-Star Album Review!
Composed by Cecily Wilborn
Originally published in Daddy B. Nice's New Album Reviews.
August 12, 2026:
CECILY WILBORN: Soul Therapy (Blackground Records/ONErpm)
Four Stars **** Distinguished Effort. Should please old fans and gain new.
Buy Cecily Wilborn's new SOUL THERAPY album at Apple.
SOUL THERAPY Track List:
1. It's Been A While
2. Sundown
3. Feeling Lucky (feat. Cupid)
4. I Think I Love Him
5. I Wanna Ride
6. Rock Me Daddy
7. Only One For Me
8. Can't Be Your Fool
9. Sleeping With A Fool
10. Crazy Thing
11. Drink You Away
12. 911
13. Tell Me What It Is
14. Figure It Out
15. I Need Your Love
16. SuperHeroes
17. Hope
Cecily Wilborn's
Soul Therapy is a woman's album dedicated to the female side of romantic relationships. Do I say that to deter the male audience? By no means. I'm merely emphasizing the project is squarely in the ladies' wheelhouse, powerfully honest and transparent, equivalent to watching a good romance or rom-com, which as a man I know I should experience more of, but you know how it is. So hard to find time between all the vengeance-fueled action flicks.
Listening to
Soul Therapy, I even felt claustrophobic at times, flashing back to interminable arguments in failed marriages and relationships as the domestic drama in the lyrics unfolds from the highs of sexual infatuation and the exhilaration of love to the lows of emotional detachment, financial irresponsibility and cheating.
Wilborn confesses at the outset that she's undergone therapy (thus the set's title) and being the hard-working creative artist she is, proceeds to punctuate the stages of her domestic odyssey in this generous 17-track album with voice-over interludes in therapist jargon. For example, at one point she remarks, "Apparently, they say I have unresolved trauma. What exactly is that anyway?" (Soft chuckle.) "I don't know. Sounds like a fancy way to say, 'Girl, get your shit together.'"
And the sequence of the songs fits as perfectly as a jigsaw puzzle into the three stages of a romantic relationship:
Falling-in-love: It's Been A While, Sundown, Feeling Lucky, I Think I Love Him, I Wanna Ride, Rock Me Daddy, Only One For Me.
Falling-out-of-love: Can't Be Your Fool, Sleeping With A Fool, Crazy Thing, Drink You Away, 911, Tell Me What It Is.
Coda: Figure It Out, I Need Your Love, SuperHeroes, Hope.
For those unfamiliar, the Arkansas-based Wilborn is the pre-eminent face of the new "countrified" strain of southern soul music, based primarily on her signature song and contemporary southern soul classic,
"Southern Man," which along with tunes like GMB Li Curt's (Curt The Country Man's)
"Back Roads" and Ciddy Boi P's
"This Is Texas" wrenched southern soul culture way past Jeter Jones' already-disrupting trail ride music to much nearer the thumping heart of Morgan Wallen-styled, contemporary country.
As a young singer, Cecily has said she was encouraged by veterans "to stay in her lane" (meaning the style of Johnnie Taylor et.al.), but she decided to innovate. Her resounding success is self-evident if you watch line-dancing videos or southern soul audiences dancing at today's concerts, where you won't see stingy-brimmed pork pie hats (the iconic bluesman headgear of decades) but cowboy hats---lots of cowboy hats---not to mention "daisy dukes" and cowboy boots.
Soul Therapy doesn't boast anything as career-defining as
"Southern Man" or as incendiary as Wilborn's
"Red Cup Blues," directed by King George's pedal steel guitar-playing producer Kang 803. But it comes close, particularly with the pull-out-all-the-stops cry of female anguish,
"Tell Me What It Is". Daddy B. Nice has been hard on
"Tell Me What It Is," taking pot shots at least twice. The first time I told Cecily to leave the angry tirades to King Willonius
("Do You Ever Get Tired?"). Her strong point, I advised, was easy-going, mid-tempo gems like
"Living For The Weekend" or
"Party".
The second was in this month's #1 Singles commentary
(Bird Williams' "Pictures On The Phone"). "I recently criticized the awesomely talented Cecily Wilborn" (I wrote) "for missing the bullseye with 'Tell Me What It Is,' more angry rant than transformative art." But after listening to the album version of "Tell Me What It Is" I just want to say, "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa." The single I remembered as overwrought now sounds gentler. An emotional yet entirely reasonable plea for some male-female communication.
Then there was my initial reaction to
"Sundown," another relatively spectacular project in terms of production and vocal energy, with an acoustic guitar-dominated soundtrack so pristine and perfect it had the contrary effect of alienating me by over-reaching. I remember thinking it sounded more like contemporary country or "Americana" than southern soul. Yet, on the album "Sundown" comes off as refreshing, like a welcome gust of wind on a muggy day.
Could that be because the rest of the album is comprised of those "easy-going, mid-tempo gems" that have encouraged so much praise? Over the course of such a lengthy, musically homogenous set, "Tell Me Like It Is" and "Sundown" provide gratifying relief---invigorating contrasts---to the sameness of many of those more conventional tracks. Wilborn is innovative too. Just listen to
"Superheroes".
Which is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
"Feeling Lucky"---uplifting, easy-going, mid-tempo---remains the stand-out song of
Soul Therapy. It's got all that plus a rhythm track that punches along with the requisite funkiness. Cecily's sometimes double-tracked vocal is masterful, coaxing you to listen again and again. Plus it's got Cupid, but "Feeling Lucky" would be a durable hit single even without Cupid, and three million YouTube viewers seem to agree.
There are stretches in
Soul Therapy when the mid-tempo melodies do get repetitive. Wilborn creates a lot of tunes with a favored, default chord structure.
"I Think I Love Him" (which coincidentally begins with a teasing Smokey Robinson riff) is not so different in musical structure from
"I Wanna Ride," which isn't very different from
"Sleeping With A Fool". But these are minor faults more than compensated by tunes like
"Rock Me Daddy," whose
Daddy B. Nice July charting followed "Feeling Lucky's"
June charting.
"Two steps to the right,
Two steps to the left,
Put my hips where he wanna,
So we can do that country step."
You can't get much simpler, homespun and derivative than that, yet Cecily transforms these hackneyed southern soul tropes into something fresh and new. She sprinkles a little spice in there:
"Now I ain't never been the jealous type.
I like to brag every chance I get.
"He got the body of a god, oooh God,
In a place you won't forget."
And you come away nodding your head in appreciative wonder the way you used to when the legendary
Ms. Jody was doing the damned thing. In fact, Cecily Wilborn has filled the gap left by Ms. Jody's diminished recording activity. She's the Ms. Jody of the
New Generation.
---Daddy B. Nice
Listen to all the tracks from Cecily Wilborn's SOUL THERAPY album on YouTube.
Read Daddy B. Nice's New Generation Artist Guide to Cecily Wilborn.
Buy Cecily Wilborn's SOUL THERAPY album at Apple.
Listen to Cecily Wilborn's SOUL THERAPY album on Spotify.
************
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SouthernSoulRnB.com
P.O. Box 19574
Boulder, Colorado 80308
Or e-Mail:
daddybnice@southernsoulrnb.com
*************
January 24, 2026:
WINNERS ANNOUNCED!
Daddy B. Nice's 19th Annual...
2025 Southern Soul Music Awards
Best Out-Of-Left-Field Song
"Side By Side"---Cecily Wilborn, King George
Listen to Cecily Wilborn & King George singing "Side By Side" on YouTube.
Read Daddy B. Nice Artist Guide.
Buy Cecily Wilborn & King George's "Side By Side" at Apple.
November 26, 2025:
Cecily Wilborn Ascends From #35 To #20 On The New Generation Southern Soul Chart...
November 26, 2025:
Over the last quarter-century Daddy B. Nice’s Top 100 Artists charts have defined the hierarchy of southern soul music’s most distinguished performers with near universally-accepted accuracy. Constructed of comprehensive artist guides including profiles, biographies, discographies, recommended singles and more, each chart takes about a decade to complete. And roughly halfway through his third and newest chart,
Southern Soul: The New Generation, Daddy B. Nice is on schedule. However, given the marathon nature of the project---and as with his two previous charts---adjustments sometimes become necessary in order to retain the integrity of the rankings. Such is the case with the following recording artist.
...Becoming the fifth-highest-ranked female recording artist in contemporary southern soul.
"My daddy cannot only sing.
He's the reason why I sing."
Cecily Wilborn is from Marianna, Arkansas, a hamlet not far from the blues-drenched city of West Memphis. Her father, a preacher, was a "quartet artist" signed to Ecko Records, John Ward's southern soul indie label in Memphis. In gospel music the term "quartet artist" is (as the title suggests) a foursome of singers in the mode of Sam Cooke & The Soul Stirrers and a constant source of some of the finest sounds to emerge from gospel.
A self-professed "daddy's girl," Cecily started writing music at an early age, won competitions as a singer, studied music production and wowed the southern soul world in 2022 with her hit single
"Southern Man," a melodic and lyrically superb, country-infused anthem that recalled the venerable Ms. Jody's entry into southern soul music a decade a half earlier with her head-turning, country-infused lullaby,
"I Never Take A Day Off (From Loving My Baby)".
Ms. Wilborn's hard-working and meteoric path to success has taken her to the very top of the southern soul genre, pairing with West Love on "Southern Man" and working with King George's producer Kang 803 on her incendiary "Red Cup Blues". In a male-dominated industry in which very few women are able to establish the peer help necessary to stretch a hit song or two into a consistent hit-making career, Cecily Wilborn has defied the odds, churning out songs with the best of the male artists, along the way becoming that enviably lucrative exception to the rule, especially among women: a concert headliner.
"I love stories," she says, and that is what made "Southern Man" a classic. Dozens of name artists and hundreds of wannabes look to this song as the new beacon of where southern soul is going. Indeed, her collaboration with West Love on the remix of the song came about only after learning West Love was thinking about doing a cover of her own.
Wilborn's 2025 singles ("I Need The Blues," "Tell Me What It Is," and the just-released "Sundown") haven't been as successful as the prior years' output, but not for lack of trying. The songs are highly experimental (ferociously so in the case of "Tell Me What It Is"), and in their daring yet another indicator of how driven Cecily is. And all are technically proficient, on a level few of her peers can muster. "Sundown," the latest, is also the most spectacular, with a vocal strong enough to blow Dorothy out of Kansas. In sheer energy and "want-to," they bode well for the future.
Congratulations to Cecily Wilborn on joining the rare company of West Love, Ms. Jody, Nellie "Tiger" Travis and Karen Wolfe in the top five southern soul divas in current southern soul.
October 1, 2024:Daddy B. Nice's Profile:
"Wow!! Never been a country music lover but damn!!"
This is a comment from a YouTube music video for "Back Roads" by Curt The Country Man (aka GMB Li Curt), one of Cecily Wilborn's peers in demolishing the longstanding boundary between southern soul and country music this year. The comment could just as well be the southern soul audience's reaction to Wilborn's own career breakthrough, which has been much more exhaustive and sophisticated than Curt's, beginning with her major hit and signature song "Southern Man," currently viewed over 3 million times on its various YouTube streams (one featuring the popular West Love), followed by a sequence of new singles culminating in the very first southern soul/country hybrid album, Kuntry Gurl Playlist (scroll down to Tidbits #6).
"Never been a country music lover" certainly defines my own tastes, with a few isolated exceptions mainly in the rock and roll era, and yet those crossover hits ("Spirit In The Sky," "Wolverton Mountain," "Silver Thread & Golden Needles" ((Linda Ronstadt's version)), "Battle Of New Orleans" and anything from the first two albums by The Band) had huge musical attractions due to their originality. Back in the late sixties, psychedelic phase of rock and roll, The Band's music literally changed my life, directing me back to the family roots I had rejected in my counter-culture rebellion. That's similar to the impacts of the singles by Wilborn, Curt The Country Man, Ciddy Boi P and others in 2024. And from a southern soul perspective, this cloning of southern soul and country is really no different than the absorption of zydeco and hip-hop in previous eras. It just seems stranger, like wading through shallow water and encountering a shelf drop-off into deeper water.
I was reminded of my mild aversion to country music as a genre listening to KUNTRY GURL PLAYLIST in its entirety. (See Tidbits #6 "New Album Alert!" by scrolling down this page.) I found it difficult to enjoy the country formats, track after track, in a long-play collection, as opposed to the individual country-crossover triumphs like "Red Cup Blues" and "Party". Maybe it's this tepidity (antipathy is too strong a word) to country as a whole that makes its influences and techniques all the more exotic when it works in a southern soul context. "Southern Man," which unfortunately isn't included in the set, is dominated by un-country-like piano instrumentation (as is, coincidently, Curt's "Back Roads"). It's the country-style vocals that make the songs unique. And isn't that what makes "Red Cup Blues," perhaps Cecily's most rigorously country project, so powerful?
It's also fascinating to gauge the artists' conceptions of their own work. Do they call it southern soul or do they call it country? Wilborn pointedly abstains from the term "southern soul" in her biographical information, yet uses it constantly in normal conversation. The male artists go with "southern soul" without even thinking about it. Well (you might think) who else is going to play this youthful black country?
What cannot be disputed is that Cecily Wilborn is head-and-shoulders above any of the above-noted male artists in terms of both what she has accomplished and what she is poised to accomplish. Assisted by her husband/producer, she has evolved from an amorphous and tentatively-defined newcomer (a few years ago) into a sharply-etched performer whose every project legitimately attracts attention and streams. She has mastered that indefinable and rarely attainable transformation from unknown into a genuine "brand". She may be bringing a country vibe to southern soul, but she is indisputably a southern soul singer. As she sings in her new single, "Living For The Weekend," "Play me some Johnnie Taylor or some Marvin Sease."
Listen to Ena Esco interviewing Cecily Wilborn: "Rising Star Cecily Wilborn: From Small-Town Arkansas to 4M Streams & Beyond" on YouTube.
Listen to K. Young interviewing Cecily Wilborn on YouTube.
--Daddy B. Nice
Tidbits
1.
Originally published in Daddy B. Nice's Southern Soul Awards (Best of 2023).
January 1, 2024Best Collaboration:
"He got a smooth walk / He kinda growl when he talk..." Impactful as it was late in 2022, Cecily Wilborn's anthem took off like a second-stage rocket with this timely 2023 pairing.
"Southern Man" ----- Cecily Wilborn & West Love
Listen to Cecily Wilborn & West Love singing "Southern Man" on YouTube.
Buy Cecily Wilborn's single "Southern Man" featuring West Love.
2.
Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 "BREAKING" Southern Soul Singles For. . .
-------MARCH 2024-------
1. "Red Cup Blues"-----Cecily Wilborn
Mark March 2024 as the month and year when country music invaded and dominated the top ten singles, and none leaped the genre boundaries with the breathtaking ease of Cecily Wilborn's "Red Cup Blues". The recent winner of the 17th Annual (2023) Southern Soul Award for
Best Collaboration ("Southern Man" with
West Love), Wilborn is also featured in last month's "News & Notes"
"Will Southern Soul Deejays Play Country-Western/Southern Soul?" on Daddy B. Nice's Corner.
Listen to Cecily Wilborn singing "Red Cup Blues" on YouTube.
3.
...from SOUTHERN SOUL MUSIC AWARDS
18th Annual Southern Soul Music Awards 2024
Click here.
Best Southern Soul Female Vocalist
The singer who became famous in 2023 with her hit single "Southern Man" went rogue---all "country"---in 2024 with a stunning, acapella-like tour de force. Kang803 of King George fame contributed a steel-guitar-dominated soundtrack that matched Cecily Wilborn's vocal in its single-minded, brilliant clarity, setting the stage for the richest-toned vocal of Wilborn's upwardly-trending career.
"Red Cup Blues"---- Cecily Wilborn
Listen to Cecily Wilborn singing "Red Cup Blues" on YouTube.
Buy Cecily Wilborn's "Red Cup Blues" at Apple.
Honorable Mention: "Stand On Business" by Myia B, "Step By Step" by Summer Wolfe
4.
February 18, 2024:...from Daddy B. Nice's News & Notes
Will Southern Soul Deejays Play Country Western/Southern Soul?
"Texas Hold 'Em," Beyonce's unabashedly country-western-styled dance jam, is generating controversy amongst country music deejays across America. The same thing---in reverse---is happening on a lesser scale in the world of southern soul. I'm not just talking about the preponderance of cowboy hats, "daisy dukes" and boots, horses, trail rides, pickups and musical blending of country themes into southern soul that has been going on now for roughly a decade since Big Yayo's pre-cowboy-hat-wearing "Cowgirl" appeared and a half-decade since Jeter Jones' "Black Horse" officially kicked off the "country-fication" of southern soul. Nor am I even talking about the avalanche of country-styled tunes and titles that have followed, songs like Jus Epik's & Money Waters' "Country Girl," in which country influences both musical and lyrical customize a still sturdy southern soul chassis.
Which brings me to the present moment: the pure country-western vocals of Jeter Jones new "Country Girl" and Cecily Wilborn's "Red Cup Blues". Yepp. Two major artists have crossed the boundary between southern soul and country. All the way. Are they experiments? It's hard to say. Jeter Jones recorded a song that's become a southern soul classic: "My Country Girl". But his new "Country Girl," from the just-released Big Boss EP, is pure country---not least the exaggerated vocal. But even that shocker is surpassed by Cecily Wilborn's new song, "Red Cup Blues," in which she outdoes Beyonce in her genuine transformation into a bonafide country singer. So much so that your Daddy B. Nice's Top 10 Singles for March might sound more like a country-western chart than southern soul. As if that weren't enough, the producer for "Red Cup Blues" is Kang 803, King George's producer and the hottest southern soul producer of the moment. If you remember, Kang 803 inserted delicate steel guitar fillips into King George's #1 song of 2023, "Grown Man (Say She Need Somebody"). And they---he and George---used to be rappers!
I recently stumbled upon a song that came out in the latter part of 2023 called
"Back Roads" by GMB Li Curt and ShawtyMac, just a couple of the black artists including K.D. Conner, Curt The Countryman and Countryboi Tye currently recording country. Marcellus The Singer actually guests on another version of the song by Curt The Countryman. "Back Roads" is too good to ignore, but I confess to almost feeling guilty enjoying it because it is country, man, so much so that when the rap verse came in I felt a twinge of relief because, ironically, the rap validated it as a contemporary southern soul song!
As long as there has been country music there have been black country artists. The great Ray Charles straddled both genres like a colossus back in my young day. But here's the kicker. These new songs ARE pure country. They're not southern soul. If a new generation of musicians follows suit, you can't really call it southern soul anymore. Or can you?
5.
November 1, 2024Country Stylin’
Country in southern soul? You either love it or you don’t. And loving it doesn’t mean you don’t love traditional southern soul. It simply means country has elbowed its way into southern soul and enriched it in the same way hiphop (“Hell Naw To The Naw Naw” by Bishop Bullwinkle, “Take Your Time” by Joe Nice & Sean Dolby), funk (“Mr. Sexy Man” by Nellie “Tiger” Travis, “Roll It” by Mr. Sam) and zydeco (“Don’t Mess With My Tu Tu” by Denise LaSalle, “Zydeco Bounce” by T.K. Soul, “Call The Police” by Stephanie McDee) have at first shocked and ultimately enriched the genre in prior eras.
Stan Butler was one of the first to begin experimenting with country styling a few years ago in songs like “My Deaf Brother” and “Mighty Good Woman,” tunes that appeared to be novelties because of their unusual reliance on spoken narratives and hyperbole. They became the most successful recordings of his career. Then, both before and after R&B superstar Beyoncé recorded her country album early in 2024, a flood of country-inspired music including Ciddy Boi P’s “This Is Texas (Beyoncé Reply),” Cecily Wilborn’s “Southern Man” (2023) and Curt The Country Man’s “Back Roads” (early 2024), inundated southern soul, forcing deejays and programmers into some awkward decisions about what constitutes southern soul in the eyes of its audience. That transformation is still roiling southern soul playlists today. This month Daddy B. Nice features four of the most dominant musicians in this new wave of countrified southern soul.
Country Stylin': Featured Artists:
Stan Butler
“Down In The Kountry” (feat. West Love)
“My Deaf Brother”
“Cowboy Ride”
“Mighty Good Woman”
Ciddy Boi P
“This Is Texas (Beyoncé Reply)”
“One More Day”
“Fishing Hole”
“Can I Get It” (feat. Till 1 & Mississippi Hummin’ Boy)
Curt The Country Man (aka GMB Li Curt)
“Back Roads” (feat. Shawty Mac)
“Back Roads” (feat. Marcellus The Singer)
“2 Beers”
“Country Man”
Cecily Wilborn
“Red Cup Blues,”
“Southern Man”
“Southern Man (The Anthem)” feat. West Love
“Living For The Weekend”
Southern Soul Country Style: The Top Singles
1.
”Southern Man”---Cecily Wilborn
2.
”Back Roads”---Curt The Country Man
3.
”Down In The Kuntry”---Stan Butler
4.
”One More Day”---Ciddy Boi P
5.
”Red Cup Blues”---Cecily Wilborn
6.
”This Is Texas”---Ciddy Boi P
7.
”2 Beers”---Curt The Country Man
8.
”Mighty Good Woman”---Stan Butler
9.
”Living For The Weekend”---Cecily Wilborn
10.
”My Deaf Brother”---Stan Butler
************************************************
6.
September 21, 2024: NEW ALBUM ALERT!
Buy Cecily Wilborn's new Kuntry Gurl Playlist album at Apple.
KUNTRY GIRL PLAYLIST TRACK LIST:
1.Living For The Weekend
2
Kuntry Gurl
3
Rocking Chair
4
Nobody But You
5
Backtrack
6
Karma
7
Be Myself
8
Showdown
9
In Da Kuntry
10
In Da Kuntry With My Daddy (feat. Cecil Coleman Sr.)
11.
Red Cup Blues
12.
Party
Daddy B. Nice notes:
Listen to all the tracks from Cecily Wilborn's new KUNTRY GIRL PLAYLIST on YouTube.
Listen to all the tracks from Cecily Wilborn's KUNTRY GIRL PLAYLIST album at Spotify.
Sample/Buy Cecily Wilborn's new KUNTRY GIRL PLAYLIST album at Apple.
Honorary "B" Side
"Red Cup Blues"
