With a New Album at Age 80, Connie Smith Is Still Singing Her Heart Out: 'I Think That's My Destiny'

No one would think any less of Connie Smith if she chose to rest on her laurels. And she has some mighty laurels to rest on, starting with that plaque with her name on it in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

So what drives the 80-year-old country legend to still record?

"It's what I love ... I love music," Smith tells PEOPLE. "I can sing around the table. I can sing at the kitchen sink. It don't make a difference. It's just in me, and I think that's my destiny."

And make no mistake, Smith can still sing, as she proves conclusively on her new album, The Cry of the Heart, out on Friday. Time has added burnish to her sound, but the familiar timbre, phrasing — and, most of all, emotion — still resonate from one of country's most powerful voices.

Lots of Smith's fellow icons have held that voice in the highest esteem. George Jones and Merle Haggard both considered her their favorite female artist. And Dolly Parton famously said, "There's really only three real female singers: Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, and Connie Smith. The rest of us are only pretending."

Yet Smith downplays the lavish praise. "Well, I'd like to earn it," she says, "so I'm trying."

Country aficionados would say she hit the mark right from the start with her debut single, "Once a Day," released in 1964. Now considered her signature song, it stayed atop the chart for eight weeks (a record that wasn't broken by another female country artist until 2012 with Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together"). Always far more interested in singing than stardom, Smith earned 19 more top 10 hits through the mid-1970s and fashioned a career that widely influenced the next generations of female artists. She was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2012.

Her latest project is her 37th studio album and her third produced by her husband, Marty Stuart (who's in the 2020 Hall of Fame class). It's also her first album since 2011.

What took her so long?

As she's done in other phases of her 57-year career, Smith says, she chose to put her home life first: She's the proud mother of five and grandmother of eight, and her first great-grandchild was born last October. She and Stuart also had to carve out their studio time amid his packed work schedule and many side projects.

Still, Stuart also was the one who gave her the final nudge when he presented her with a new song by Dallas Frazier, the master songwriter who penned "Elvira," "There Goes My Everything" and "What's Your Mama's Name," among other country standards. Over her career, Smith has recorded more than 70 of Frazier's songs (including an entire album of his music), and she decided it was time for one more.

"He just has such a big heart, and he can read people, and he read me," says Smith. "He knows the kind of song I like, and sometimes he's even sung them like he thinks I'd sing them, and he's usually right. He's just amazing."

The songs that Smith likes the most — it's obvious from all 11 of the album's tracks — brim with the straight-up fiddle-and-steel twang that the genre was built on. Smith says she named the album The Cry of the Heart, because to her, that's the sound of country.

"It's my heart going out to the people that I sing to," she says, "so if this song fits them, then they know someone identifies with them. And it makes them feel better when someone identifies with their pain or their joy."

More often for Smith, it's the pain. No wonder she's earned the nickname "the Queen of Broken Hearts": Eight of the album's tracks pulse with heartache, even when it arrives on an uptempo beat. Highlights include Frazier's "I Just Don't Believe Me Anymore"; the Billy Walker classic, "A Million and One"; and the Smith-Stuart co-write, "Spare Me No Truth Tonight."

Smith has also populated her new music with a Hall of Fame who's who, besides her and Stuart. Among the songwriters are Mel Tillis and Haggard, and perhaps most movingly, Smith brought into the studio 83-year-old Hall of Fame pianist Hargus "Pig" Robbins, who has played on many of her albums, including her first, released in 1965.

"Oh, I hope I can have him for the rest of the albums that I record," she says. "He's been on every one I could get him on, when he wasn't on somebody else's session. When he plays, it just lays down such a foundation that it's easier for me to sing."

Also elevating Smith's voice is the sweet sound of pedal steel in the hands of Gary Carter, who's recorded or toured with Randy Travis, Faith Hill, Kenny Chesney and Alan Jackson, among many others.

"I've always called the steel guitar my dancing partner," says Smith. "If I'd have been an instrument, I'd have been a steel guitar. I love it because there's that cry in it."

Stuart's touch, of course, can be felt and heard throughout the album. Besides producing it, he played multiple instruments, sang harmonies and co-wrote two of the songs. "He is a genius, and he's so good at everything he does, and he can do everything," Smith says. "He's got it all, and he's great to work with because his heart is so big."

Smith vows she won't wait another 10 years for her next album. In fact, she says, she already has seven songs for it. A serious bout with COVID-19 that hospitalized her in January has slowed her in recent months, she allows, but she's recently been back performing at the Grand Ole Opry, and she's determined to play full shows again.

And, she says, she's also determined to continue to grow as an artist: "I love to sing, and I've never reached what I think I'd like to be. If I could just take some lessons from Adele or Trisha Yearwood or someone that has a world-class voice, you know, that would be great."

Those are just two of the names that come to her mind when she thinks of — as Dolly Parton put it — "real female singers." Smith also places Parton, Streisand and Ronstadt on her list, as well.

But her all-time favorite? Sorry, Dolly.

"I have to say Loretta Lynn," Smith reveals. "I could follow her around like a puppy."