Cowboy Up – Kaylee Bell (13th Floor Album Review)
Kaylee Bell has just released Cowboy Up and the 13th Floor’s Robin Kearns gives it a spin (or two).
In the ever-evolving soundscape of popular music in Aotearoa, there are invariably who would have thought? moments. Especially for us older and longer players. First, who’d have thought international country stars would be puling big crowds into our largest venues? Second, and more to the point of this review, who’d have thought a kiwi country artist would be well-regarded in Nashville and touring the US and Europe?
Kaylee Bell is such an artist: currently the most-streamed female country musician in Aotearoa as well as here. Her fame has accumulated at pace: first, winning Australia’s Toyota Star Maker award in 2013; then a decade later, reaching dizzy heights on the US Billboard charts with Keith, a tribute to fellow kiwi country star Keith Urban. In between, support act for a range of big names then beginning the venue-size ascent in Auckland (from the Tuning Fork to the Power Station to the Town Hall, and now, in 2025, the Civic).
Cowboy Up is Bell’s fourth album. Its title is that of the opening song: a country-pop anthem celebrating the womanly quest for respect in relationships. A demand that a man either steps up or steps out.
Country music may have its roots in traditional gender roles and conservative values, but Bell’s opening throws down a Me Too-era gauntlet that’s a light year from Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man. Yet, to deftly please traditionalist, conventional country tropes remain (Heel, toe, and around we go/It’s a rodeo…).
Eight tracks over an economical 25 minutes makes this a compact offering. Plenty of banjo, driving guitars, percussive beats, but most importantly, Bell’s soaring voice. Produced by longtime collaboration, Nashville- based Tom Jordan, the album showcases Bell’s playful swagger as one commentator crisply put it.
There’s a bit of everything thematically, whimsy included. Second track Ring On It has Bell chiding her man (It’s been eight years and that’s a long time/For my left hand to feel so light). A ring as more than just a symbol. There’s the cheery The Thing About Us and the romance of Red Dirt Romeo.
Later tracks pay homage to Bell’s early influences. First, Song for Shania, offers a nod of appreciation to Shania Twain who Bell has looked up to since childhood. (I was in the backseat 6 years old/ ‘Still the One’ playing on the radio/ just a little girl but it changed my world). Then homage to another hero with a Natalie Imbruglia cover adding country inflection to the well-known Torn.
What’s striking is the global sound that Cantabrian Kaylee Bell offers. No hint of kiwi intonation here. An affected American accent is part of the package. And its Tennessee not Timaru or Temuka as place reference. Aotearoa maybe home, but Cowboy Up signals the upward trajectory of a star-in the-making. While local country-leaning bands like The Warratahs chart the back roads close-to-home, Bell’s is a country with rough edges smoothed off, a fulsome sound with the hybrid vigour of country interbred with pop. Songs for radio, road trips and to be overheard in supermarkets. Breezy and uplifting in the way the tragi-country of, for example, Lucinda Williams, could never be. And that’s surely part of the appeal. Simple, upbeat, big production. Songs devoid of politics and pain as distraction to a discordant world. A happy place within the wide church of country.
Last track Heartbeat slows the pace in candid autobiography with Bell singing of the welcome pregnancy that prefigured the birth of her son this year. Replete with life-changing feelings and turning points. A delicate and beautiful close-out to a powerful collection that will doubtless further propel the name Kaylee Bell towards the marriage of two words: country and stardom.
Robin Kearns
Cowboy Up by Kaylee Bell
Out Now
Stream or Purchase
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