THE PRETTY RECKLESS's TAYLOR MOMSEN On 'Dear God' Album: 'We Had A Very Wonderful Time Making This Record'

In a new interview with Carr Stereo With Terrie Carr, the music interview show and podcast hosted by veteran radio personality Terrie Carr, THE PRETTY RECKLESS frontwoman Taylor Momsen spoke about the musical and lyrical inspiration for the band's fifth studio album, "Dear God", which was released last month via Fearless Records. Taylor said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, the thing about inspiration is that there's no process to it. And that's what makes it challenging. There's no formula to inspiration. Sometimes it's fast, sometimes it's long, but there's this process of just — the only process is waiting and patience and living life, and that can be torturous, for lack of a better term, because you don't know when or if it's gonna come."

She continued: "I always wait for inspiration to strike because I never want to craft you a song. That is never my intention with music. I understand how it works. I'm very capable of doing it. Like, you could give me a topic and a style and go, 'Write me a song,' and I go, 'Sure, I got you.' But that's not the kind of music that I wanna make. I wanna make music that's coming from a very real place that has layers and depth, and it's something that I want to express — and not even want to; need to. That's why I write songs. I write songs in order to process my life and see things clearly or attempt to. And so I do it for myself as this outlet, and then they eventually turn into records."

Momsen added: "This process for 'Dear God' was kind of in one way no different than any other record, but the writing itself and what kind of poured out of me at the end of it definitely was... It had a different thing to it that was very apparent to me, where it was so brutally honest and it was, like, nothing was guised in metaphor. Everything was just kind of directly ripped from my diary in this very matter-of-fact kind of way that created a very unique record for us. So you're very much getting a very intimate look as to how my mind works and what it's like to be me."

Momsen also talked about the decision to once again produce "Dear God" herself with Jonathan Wyman and THE PRETTY RECKLESS guitarist Ben Phillips. She said: "Well, Jon is the only person we've worked with other than [late THE PRETTY RECKLESS producer] Kato [Khandwala]. So when Kato passed away — Kato was essentially the fifth member of the band. He just didn't tour with us. And so when we lost him, we were very lost. We didn't know where to go and where to turn from that after that. And luckily I knew one other person, Jon, who's a fantastic engineer and he's a very dear friend of mine. And so I called him up 'cause I had written [2021's] 'Death By Rock And Roll' and needed to get it out, and we didn't have a, a process in place of how to record without Kato. And so he was there through that entire learning process. He understood where we were at mentally. He's family — not by blood, but he's family to me. And so he created a very comfortable environment for us to allow us to kind of be who we were at that time, which was not great. And in the grand scheme of music, Ben and I, we've always lived under the ethic of wanting our George Martin, of wanting to build upon what we did previously with the same team and same creative partners. Because switching from producer to producer and having someone impart their own sound on to what we do just has never felt right... We know who we are, we know what we sound like as a band, and all we're trying to do is serve the song and capture what we hear in our heads and have it somehow come out the other end of the speakers so everyone else can hear it too. And so working with Jon and collaboratively producing the records, me, Ben and Jon, it worked really well on 'Death By Rock And Roll', so why would we change that? And I think going into 'Dear God', we were all in a much better mental place than on 'Death By Rock And Roll', and so the recording process itself was just very, very fun. We had a very wonderful time making this record."

This past April, THE PRETTY RECKLESS released the single "Love Me", which was charged with intensity, grit and edge, while previous single "When I Wake Up" entered at No. 10 on the Mediabase Active Rock chart, while the album's lead single, "For I Am Death", became THE PRETTY RECKLESS's eighth Mainstream Rock Radio No. 1.

THE PRETTY RECKLESS is bringing its stage performance to fans across the world with the all-new headlining "Dear God" tour. This trek follows THE PRETTY RECKLESS's two-year-long run of shows the globe alongside AC/DC on the "Power Up" tour.

THE PRETTY RECKLESS performed at the prestigious 2026 MusiCares Person Of The Year Gala, where Taylor honored the legendary Mariah Carey alongside the FOO FIGHTERS, and played at the 2025 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame where Taylor performed with SOUNDGARDEN for their induction. Additionally, the band released their holiday EP "Taylor Momsen's Pretty Reckless Christmas", which features the revamped "Where Are You Christmas?" — the lead single hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Hard Rock Songs chart.

Since THE PRETTY RECKLESS's debut "Light Me Up", they've earned global acclaim with hits including "Heaven Knows" and made history as the first female-fronted band to score eight No. 1 singles on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart.