Rita Wilson on New Single "Look How Far We've Come," Jumping Into Gospel, and Her Tribute to Patsy Cline (2025)

In 2019, while leading the music series, Liner Notes, featuring songwriters performing songs they wrote and sharing the stories behind their hits, Rita Wilson connected with one of her “songwriting idols” Billy Steinberg, who later asked her to write with him and his new songwriting partner Josh Alexander.

“He’s an idol,” Wilson tells American Songwriter of Steinberg, whose catalog—along with co-writer Tom Kelly—spans Madonna’s“Like a Virgin” and Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” and “I Drove All Night,” along with “Eternal Flame” by the Bangles, Whitney Houston’s 1987 hit “So Emotional, and Heart’s “Alone,” among other hits for the Pretenders (“I’ll Stand By You”) and Divinyls (“I Touch Myself”).

“What a hero, what an amazing songwriter, and what an output that he and Tom Kelly had as a partnership for so many years,” adds Wilson. “He’s a legend. And he says ‘Why don’t we write together?’ What an amazing experience to sit in a room and have him be Billy, and get to get to the story in such a beautiful way.”

She adds, “When you hear the songs that we all know so well—and in Billy’s case ‘Like a Virgin’ or ‘’True Colors’ or ‘Eternal Flame’—you know it the way you heard it the first time through those artists, but when the songwriter tells you the story and then sings it in the way they wrote it, oftentimes, it’s a very different feeling you get from it, a different kind of intimacy, yet the story is still there.”

Along with Alexander, who has co-written songs with Steinberg for Selena Gomez, Katherine McPhee, Demi Lovato, and other artists, their collaboration produced Wilson’s single “Look How Far We’ve Come,” a pop anthem examines finding hope when directionless and those rare unbreakable bonds between lovers—The road’s been winding / The lights were blinding / But look how far we’ve come / We stayed together.

On its surface, “Look How Far We’ve Come” is about a relationship but can also be interpreted through one’s art and self. “It could be about a relationship with yourself,” says Wilson. “It could be the relationship with your art, career, or a friend. It’s really about any struggle that you have with somebody or something you love. And it’s not necessarily a struggle, but just the ups and downs of it. It’s never perfectly straight and beautiful.”

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This year, Wilson also tapped into gospel music for the first time, joining Mark D. Conklin on “Through the Storm” from his 2024 album The Gospel According to Mark. The album also features Gloria Gaynor, the McCrary Sisters, John Berry, Wendy Moten, and more within gospel, and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Roots Gospel Album.

“Elvis [Presley] exposed me to gospel music,” shares Wilson. “I never thought I’d be part of a gospel album. I’m so grateful and so thankful. I’m the biggest sponge that takes in everything that I possibly can take in from all these extraordinary people I’ve been able to create with.”

Another first for Wilson will arrive in March 2025 when she performs with the Nashville Symphony at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. The concert will blend some of Wilson’s original songs and other favorites crossing Broadway and standards.

Somehow, Wilson’s musical journey has manifested in ways she could never imagine since her 2012 debut of covers, AM/FM, and her first dive into songwriting on her 2016 self-titled album. In November Wilson paid tribute to one of her childhood influences for the PBS special, Great Performances –Patsy Cline: Walkin’ After Midnight. Filmed at the historic Ryman Auditorium, the concert featured Wilson performing Cline’s 1962 hit “She’s Got You,” along with performances by Wynonna, Pat Benatar with Neil Giraldo, Kristin Chenoweth, Ashley McBryde, Beverly D’Angelo, and more.

During the tribute, Wilson also performed her original “Big City, Small Town Girl” from her 2019 album Halfway to Home, an homage to some of her earlier influences, including Cline. “Growing up, we didn’t have genres,” says Wilson. “We had AM radio and everything was on there. Patsy Cline was on there.” Wilson’s lyric Through my orange trees I could see the Hollywood sign,
and hear my parents playin’ The Beatles and Patsy Cline, was her reality. She could see the Hollywood sign, and her parents were playing the Beatles and Cline.

“We just put on the radio, and you were hearing the Beatles and the next song could be Patsy Cline,” she adds. “The next would be the Temptations or Diana Ross or it could be the Beach Boys. It was just everything. What an amazing exposure to have to music.”

Every step has become a series of kismet events, including a recent jam with another songwriting hero of Wilson’s Joni Mitchell. In October, Brandi Carlile, who produces Mitchell’s Joni Jam concerts, invited Wilson to be one of the “jammers” at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

While backstage, Wilson realized that the last time she was on that stage was 50 years earlier. “I went to Hollywood High School, and our class was so large, we graduated and accepted our diplomas on the stage of the Hollywood Bowl,” remembers Wilson. “So the last time I was on that stage I was walking across it in my cap and gown picking up my diploma. If somebody had said to me back then, ‘One day, you’re going to be on this stage singing with Joni Mitchell,’ I would have thought ‘Never in a million years.’”

Along with Mitchell, Wilson is still powered by songwriters past and present, from Carole King, Smokey Robinson, Jackson Browne, J.D. Souther, and Karla Bonoff, to name a few.

“It goes on and on, but those people influenced me so much as a young woman,” Wilson says. “They were so impactful and so powerful. I learned instantly why melody is so important, why lyrics are so important, why a beat is important, and why what you’re saying has to be very clear. I had the best teachers just by listening to that music.”

And Wilson is still awed by working with Steinberg, and other songwriters like Dan Wilson, Darrell Brown, Liz Rose, Lori McKenna, Nathan Chapman, and Diane Warren throughout the years. “In some ways, it does feel like look how far we’ve come,” she says.

“I know some of the greatest of the greatest songwriters, and they love what they do, and they love the success that they have,” adds Wilson, “but they still love the creative process, so they keep doing it, and that’s inspiring to me.”

She recalls something Bruce Springsteen told her years ago about a songwriter they knew who had decided to take a break from music and writing. “He [Springsteen] said, ‘I told him, don’t worry. Great songs stay written,’” says Wilson. “That is very true because it doesn’t matter when the song comes out. It only matters if it’s a good song—it’s out there and stands the test of time. I truly believe that a good song is a good song, whether you’ve written it 20 years ago or 20 minutes ago.”

Throughout the past 12 years, Wilson, who has a new album written that she’ll record in 2025, feels blessed by the opportunities she’s had in music. “I feel blessed and lucky, and I’ve worked really hard,” she says.

“I’m over a decade into it, and I hope people know this is not a one-off experiment for me,” adds Wilson. “I love it, and I never take anything for granted. I keep trusting that if I’m meant to be doing this, I’ll keep walking that path.”