Key Takeaways
- Remi Wolf's 11-track third album, Mud, arrives October 9 via Island Records with a looser, more live-band sound.
- For Wolf, the “mud” is the mess of heartbreak, heavy drinking, and touring exhaustion; making the album helped her feel “clean and clear” again.
- A close-knit “family band” helped Wolf make the record; a song from their final Joshua Tree sessions became a duet with John Mayer.
Remi Wolf's third album, Mud, arrives October 9 via Island Records, marking a more inward-looking turn for the California singer-songwriter. Her offbeat, funk-laced single “Photo ID” took off on TikTok in 2020. Since then, she's released two colorful pop albums—2021's Juno and 2024's Big Ideas—and opened arena shows for Paramore and Olivia Rodrigo. But after years of touring, she felt lost, grappling with a breakup and the effects of too much drinking.
Instead of working through that upheaval alone, Wolf brought longtime collaborator Jared Solomon and a small circle of musicians to Big Bear, California. They cooked together, passed microphones around the kitchen, and wrote songs that made room for feelings Wolf says she had struggled to express. They continued at New York's Electric Lady Studios and finished in Joshua Tree, leaning toward live performances and a more open, less synth-heavy sound. Mud takes its name from the mess she was in, but also from the act of working her way out. Here's everything you need to know.
Official Tracklist & Release Date
Mud arrives October 9 via Remi Wolf/Island Records. The full 11-track sequence was revealed on Spotify prior to the album’s release:
1. "Bottle"
2. "Champagne"
3. "Twiggy"
4. "Burn Me Blue"
5. "Jamie"
6. "Covered In Mud"
7. "Moon So High" featuring John Mayer
8. "I Won't Cry"
9. "Wine Drunk"
10. "Guess"
11. "Yellow Rose"
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What Does Remi Wolf's Mud Album Title Mean?
The title began with “Covered In Mud,” a song Wolf wrote midway through the album's creation. “As soon as we wrote that song, I knew the album was gonna be called Mud,” she told Pigeons & Planes. She said touring almost nonstop, drinking heavily, and dealing with failed relationships had left her feeling lost. Writing the record became a way to confront that period rather than keep carrying it around.
That is also the idea behind the cover, which shows Wolf smiling while coated in mud. She said an image of a mud-covered child smiling inspired the photo. By the end of the process, Wolf felt “clean and clear,” calling the record “very cleansing” to make. The cover catches her in the middle of the mess; the album tells the story of moving through it.
Who Is Featured on Remi Wolf’s Mud?
- John Mayer: Spotify lists him alongside Wolf on “Moon So High,” the album's seventh track and only currently announced billed guest appearance. Wolf wrote the song during the final Joshua Tree sessions, realized it should be a duet, and sent a DM to Mayer. Their connection predates Mud: in a 2021 Harper's Bazaar interview, Wolf joked that getting a message from Mayer already made her feel she had “made it.”
Hayley Williams also joined Wolf for a live performance of “Twiggy” at Newport Folk Festival, but she is not listed as a guest on Mud's announced tracklist.
Who Produced Mud?
Wolf made Mud with a small circle of trusted collaborators. She, longtime partner Jared Solomon (also known as Solomonophonic), and Jack DeMeo share production credits on all three advance singles. Their “family band” also included Jamie McLaughlin and Wolf’s sister-in-law Gigi Grombacher, who helped write and record the album. Other producers contributed to individual songs; full credits for the remaining tracks have yet to be released.
What Does Mud Sound Like?
If Big Ideas embraced Wolf's colorful, crowded pop arrangements, Mud leaves more room around the instruments and words. Wolf told NME she wanted each song to work on an acoustic guitar around a campfire and still “hit you in the gut.” Wolf said there is “very little synth” on the new album and called it “the most minimalist I've ever been.” She and her collaborators recorded together in the same room, and she played drums on parts of the record. The advance singles still have her knack for big hooks, but “Bottle” puts warm guitars beside a difficult subject, while “I Won't Cry” lets its heartbreak build gradually into a soaring vocal. The shift is in emphasis, not a wholesale rejection of her past sound: Spotify's credits for “Twiggy” and “Bottle” still list synthesizers and drum machines alongside live players.
Wolf wrote more than 100 songs during the process and says she became more involved in the details of recording them. “I felt this permission to be honest and be my raw self,” she recalled of the Big Bear sessions. “Because of that, the writing process didn't change but the writing changed.”
How Does Mud Address Sobriety?
“There was a lot of shame about addiction, too,” Wolf told NME. She said she had used alcohol to get through the strain of touring and got sober again shortly before writing most of Mud. She named “Bottle,” “Champagne,” and “Wine Drunk” as songs about coming to terms with being done drinking. So far, only “Bottle” has been released; the other two tracks arrive with the album on October 9.
What Mud Singles Have Been Released?
Three songs have arrived ahead of the album, each revealing a different side of Wolf's shift toward more direct writing:
- “Twiggy” (July 31): Wolf's playful delivery makes room for a sharp admission about wanting someone emotionally unavailable. She joked to DIY that she wrote it about people who “lack both butts and emotional availability”—then suggested it might be about the messiness of addiction. The accompanying video features Wallows drummer Cole Preston.
- “Bottle” (August 20): Warm guitars and layered harmonies sit against a song about the pull of alcohol and the effort to resist it, as Consequence noted. The tension between its inviting groove and its darker subject matter makes it a useful entry point to the new album.
- “I Won't Cry” (September 25): A yearning ballad that builds toward a big vocal release, it came together during one of the first Big Bear writing trips. Wolf said the group wrote and recorded it in roughly three hours. She connected the song to the aftermath of her breakup: feeling unwanted while also knowing the relationship had ended. Its video, co-directed by Wolf and Milo Nichols, takes place in a drive-through car wash.
Remi Wolf Mud Live Dates
Wolf has announced two release-week shows billed as An Evening of Mud:
- October 10 — Los Angeles, CA — The Fonda Theatre
- October 13 — New York, NY — Webster Hall
