Turning heartbreak into hits has its perks — just ask country music’s rising sweetheart, Ashley Cooke and her new kissing partner, Matt Rife.
“[Matt] was the first person I thought of when we thought about this music video,” Cooke, 29, exclusively told Us of Rife’s role in her new music video for “Baby Blues.” She went on to reveal that she’s grown “really close” to the comedian, 31, after the singer serenaded Rife on stage during the 2026 CMA Fest.
“It felt like a really comfortable, easy person to have in the video,” she added.”And the kissing scene wasn’t too bad either.”
In the music video, Rife plays a poolside server who catches Cooke’s eye, offering fans the delicious slow burn of stolen glances and flirtatious tension before the two finally seal it with a smooch. But with a comedian playing her love interest, Cooke quickly learned that keeping a straight face during their intimate scene was half the battle.
“He would just say some stupid s***, [and] I was like, ‘Matt, I have to be serious and flirting with you; you can’t do this right now,’” Cooke said. “Hire the comedian, they say.”
While her steamy faux romance with Rife ended when the cameras stopped rolling, the singer’s self-titled sophomore album puts Cooke’s love life in its own writers’ round, spinning a real romance — and its ending — into a tracklist full of vulnerability. And for a twist fit for a country song, the man who inspired much of the music was often the one sitting beside her writing it.
“When you date your co-writer, things get messy,” Cooke told Us of her relationship with songwriter Johnny Clawson, who she described as both a close friend and collaborator. “A lot of what you hear on the record is about somebody that I was dating during the process of it, who I actually wrote a lot of songs with, and about.”
Instead of showing up to writing sessions with a perfectly prepped ballad, she often walked in with whatever was weighing on her heart.
“I didn’t hold back; I just told exactly how I felt and what happened,” Cooke said. “I personally believed that the best art is created out of big emotion, and there was a lot of big emotion on this record from the best to the worst, and I think that’s why this record feels so meaningful to me.”
But putting heartbreak to music, Cooke admitted, didn’t fast-track the healing process. With Clawson still tied to the music they made together, there was no clean break once the romance ran its course.
“Usually in a breakup, I think you’re able to just part ways and do your thing,” she explained. “Because we’re so intertwined musically, it’s a little weird.”
Time has taken some of the sting out of the split, with Cooke saying she believes they are “both healed,” but the toll of losing a relationship, close friend and collaborator all in one was a battle.
“We knew exactly what we were getting into when we decided to lean into the chemistry and give it a shot,” she told Us. “I’m glad that we did, but I just hate how it all had to end.”
Cooke hasn’t had to navigate the highs and heartbreaks of country music alone. As she’s found her voice, she’s had a few of Nashville’s leading ladies in her corner helping her learn how to use it.
Cooke credits Kelsea Ballerini and Carly Pearce among those women, describing the two as “big sisters” she can turn to for advice. “I think both of them have always encouraged me to not be so much of a people pleaser,” Cooke told Us, explaining that women in the industry can feel pressure to “say yes to everything” in order to remain “easy to work with.”
She continued, “Both of them have just constantly poured into me to remind me like, ‘No, you know your worth. You’re really intelligent. You know your talent, and just own that. You owning that and being confident in that does not make you any of those things. It just makes you an artist and a successful one.”
And if Ballerini and Pearce have helped Cooke find her footing in Nashville, Dolly Parton showed her what it could look like to reach the top without stepping on anyone’s boots along the way.
“There will never be another Dolly Parton,” Cooke told Us, reflecting on the queen of country music’s profound impact on both the musical genre, the culture and the world. “She was powerful and also kind, and that combination is unfortunately a bit rare in today’s world, and I think she just had a way of conducting herself where she garnered so much respect, but not in a way that she had to step on people to get there.”
That lesson, Cooke says, became even clearer after she watched the outpouring of love from people following the country icon’s passing on August 25.
“The number one thing that I saw people talking about was how she impacted lives around her,” she said. “It was how she conducted herself, how she held herself, how kind she was, how loving she was, how accepting she was of everybody.”
Parton may have built an empire big enough to match her hair, but Cooke says what inspired her most was how much the star gave back along the way.
“She could have sat back and just enjoyed her money and enjoyed her success, but instead she gave so much away,” she continued, “How cool that we got to learn from somebody like that and have a knowledge for the rest of our lives to dig from and just get to be inspired by,” she said.
