Trisha Yearwood Announces Sony Deal, New Album

Trisha Yearwood has signed with Sony Music Nashville and RCA Records for a new album.

The Grammy-winning vocalist announced the project in front of an audience of industry and media colleagues in Nashville Tuesday night (Aug. 19). The new album, which has no firm release date yet, is titled 'Prize Fighter.'

"It's a song on the album that is about beating the odds and winning the fight no matter what," she stated. "And I think it's a message that we all need to hear."

The album is Yearwood's first since 2007's 'Heaven, Heartache and the Power of Love,' which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Country Album. She also earned Grammy nominations for Best Female Country Vocal Performance ('This Is Me You’re Talking To') and Best Country Collaboration ('Let The Wind Chase You' feat. Keith Urban) from the album.

Yearwood used a sports analogy to explain her decision to record again after a seven-year break.

"When I first got my very first record deal at 26, I looked at my career like a ball player," she said. "You know, these guys come out, and they have their time. They have a few good years, and they have to know when they can't swing the bat anymore. It's been 23 years since my first single, and I'm just not ready to stop swinging the bat."

The singer admitted to nerves, saying, "I'm really just talking to keep from throwing up ... I'm gonna stop talking, because it's not my strong point."

She then performed a stellar acoustic set, accompanied only by a guitar player and keyboardist. The four-song set included three news songs: 'Cowboys Are My Weakness,' 'Your Husband's Cheatin' on Us' and a sweeping ballad titled 'I Remember You' that could be one of the most important songs of Yearwood's career. She closed with 'Wrong Side of Memphis,' one of her earliest hits.

Since her debut in 1991, Yearwood has sold more than 12 million albums, earned three Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music Awards and three Country Music Association honors and charted 19 Top 10 singles. She performed at the 70^th Academy Awards when 'How Do I Live' was nominated for Best Original Song.

Yearwood is also celebrating the fifth season of her Emmy-winning show on the Food Network, 'Trisha's Southern Kitchen,' which will premiere on Saturday, Aug. 23. She currently partners with Hellmann's and will be debuting her own line of cookware, Precious Metals, and a line of Furi cutlery this fall, with additional lifestyle brands still to be announced. Yearwood will release her third cookbook in April of 2015; two previous volumes have both entered the New York Times Bestseller list.

Yearwood is slated to join her husband, Garth Brooks, on a massive arena tour that kicks off Sept. 4 in Chicago, Ill.