Queer country star Brooke Eden talks line-dancing roots, raising her son right, surprise support from Brittany Aldean, and more: ‘I always want to be the bridge that puts people together, instead of setting that bridge on fire’

Published On June 2, 2025 » By »
Brooke Eden performs on the Summertramp stage at Outloud 2025. (photo: Steven James)

Brooke Eden performs on the Summertramp stage at Outloud 2025. (photo: Steven James)

Brooke Eden is sitting backstage at the 2025 Outloud Pride festival, looking like a rhinestone cowgirl in her turquoise chaps and bedazzled 10-gallon hat. The rising queer country star has just triumphed on the festival’s dance-centric Summertramp stage, and she’s admittedly relieved that her “Rainbow Rodeo” got the West Hollywood club crowd line-dancing in earnest.

“I had no idea what to expect. I looked at the lineup and it was literally all DJs and house music, and then me dead-set in the middle of that,” she chuckles. “I was like, ‘Is this going to work? Is this going to be OK?’ And in the beginning, I’m not going to lie, people were kind of like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ But then I feel by song two they were like, ohhhh. And by song three, they were literally putting their hands up in the air and lassoing. And I was like, ‘OK, cool. We’re at a good spot here.’”

There was a time, not long ago, when Eden never imagined pulling off a performance like this. She’d been warned by people in the Nashville that she’d be “Chely Wrighted” if she came out, and was even told, “You can either be in love or you can be a country singer — but you can’t be both.” So, she kept her relationship with her now-wife, radio promoter Hilary Hoover, secret for five years out of fear. But once Eden did come out, in 2021, both her professional and personal lives blossomed, and she realized she could in fact have it all. She soon dueted with Trisha Yearwood on “‘She’s in Love With the Girl” at the Grand Ole Opry; was named one of CMT’s Next Women of Country; was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award; and married Hoover in a ceremony officiated by Yearwood while Yearwood’s husband, Garth Brooks, serenaded the two brides as they walked down the aisle. This past November, Eden and Hoover welcomed their first child, son Beckham, through IVF, and he was at Outloud this year, cheering his mommy on.

“I think I was so nervous when I came out because I was like, ‘Will my country roots and my queerness ever be able to come together?’ And now it has come together in such a beautiful way — and in a way I never expected,” Eden marvels.

Brooke Eden wins over the Sunday afternoon crowd at Outloud 2025. (photo: Steven James)

Brooke Eden wins over the Sunday afternoon crowd at Outloud 2025. (photo: Steven James)

The Summertramp stage performance was a full-circle moment, because Eden’s new singles, “Giddy Up!” and “Rainbow Rodeo,” are nods to not only her country roots but to her sexual awakening. Her parents actually met in a line-dancing bar (“Like an Urban Cowboy situation,” she laughs), and she started singing at age 5 with her drummer dad’s local country band at a line-dancing saloon in West Palm Beach called Renegades. When she grew up, Eden got a job bartending at Renegades, and she recalls, “It was during that time in my line-dancing community that I found my queerness… realizing, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be with a guy right now. I want to be with a girl right now!’ I think I knew that very young — I think I was 4 when I realized my queerness — but then I went to a Christian school, and it was very much ingrained in me that girls are with guys. But my line-dancing community never blinked twice when I started dating a girl. And then I found my queer community and I was like, ‘Wow, this kind of reminds me of my line-dancing community.’ Just that just unconditional love. There’s this deep-rooted connection between those two communities, and it’s such a cool kind of combo.”

Eden says her family actually “was not accepting in the beginning” when she came out — “I come from a Christian Baptist background, and it was very, very difficult, the moment that they saw Hilary and me together” — and she still struggles with the fact that many of her relatives are “Trumpers,” admitting, “It’s been really difficult for me.” But over time, they’ve come around, and they’re of course thrilled to be “grandparents and aunts and uncles and nanas and papas” to Beckham. “They saw me really come into my own and come into myself, and they were like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing.’ And it really changed. It was really, really cool to watch my family’s process, because I’d been terrified to tell them.”

Eden has experienced a similar journey of unanticipated acceptance in her country career. “After I came out, so many people in my country-artist community came up to me and congratulated me, people I would not expect,” she says. “Like, Brittany Aldean. I know she has said things about the trans community that I am so not OK with, but when it came to me, because we know each other, she came up to me and my wife when we got engaged and was like, ‘I am so happy that my kids could grow up in a world where love is love.’ This was before she spoke out [against] trans people. And so, I was so confused when that happened, because we’d had personal conversations where that was not the conversation.

“And that’s why I think it’s so important to be telling our stories, because I think that for such a long time, queer people were silenced and we weren’t allowed to tell our stories,” Eden continues. “People don’t even think they know queer people, because they’re closeted. The moment that people hear the story behind the person and go, ‘Actually, I knew you five years ago when you were in the closet, and you are so much more of yourself now’ — well, I love that.”

Eden hasn’t had a chance to ask Brittany, wife of county star Jason Aldean, about the controversial anti-trans comments Brittany made in 2022. Brittany’s transphobic “joke” sparked a social media war between Brittany and another Outloud 2025 performer, Maren Morris, who later walked away from Nashville in her symbolically bridge-burning video for “The Tree.” But the optimistic Eden would rather build bridges than burn them, and she hopes to one day have the opportunity to speak freely and candidly with Brittany. “I haven’t felt like there’s been the right time; Jason and I are signed to the same record label, so we are at a lot of events together, but I just don’t feel like that’s the time to bring up such a serious and intricate topic. But I would love to have a conversation with her. I feel like there’s so many things that are left unsaid, and it’s very hard for me to understand how someone can feel that negatively about people that I love so much,” says Eden.

In general, Eden feels like having tough conversations — be it with members of the country community, the LGBTQ+ community, or her own family — is crucial. And she also hopes to spark such conversations just by living her truth. “I feel like I do want to be a bridge. I do want to be a place where people can come together and have real conversations. And those are the conversations that will move things forward; when it’s us yelling at each other and just screaming at each other, no one’s hearing anything,” she muses. “For me, it is of the utmost importance to not be extreme. I feel like I kind of live in this middle ground. I’ve toured with and am on the same record label as a lot of very big traditional country artists, and I feel like there has to be a bridge and communication between the two sides. The biggest problem that I have with politics right now is the extremism. It’s all this bullshit that’s being said from obviously the ‘Orange Man’ side, and there is some from the other side too. But there is a beautiful space in the middle, where we all need to have this communication.”

Now that Eden and Hoover have started their own family, it’s more important to her than ever to live a life that will make her son proud and help create a safe future for him. She describes becoming a parent — which involved both her and Hoover doing egg retrievals, signing up with three different sperm banks, and doing so much research that they “actually know more about the donor’s background than I know about [Eden’s] family tree” — as “the wildest thing ever” and a “really incredible process that makes me feels like, ‘OK, the universe is working with us.’” But Eden also confesses that it was a “really, really scary time to be having babies in Tennessee,” where she and Hoover currently reside, because of strict anti-abortion laws that would have made it impossible for Hoover, who carried Beckman to term, to undergo a medically necessary abortion if something had gone wrong with the pregnancy. Eden also recognizes the hypocrisy that so many supposedly “pro-life,” anti-abortion conservatives who want to force unwilling women to become mothers are also against IVF, a process that helps women who, on the contrary, are desperate to have children. “The politicians need to choose a side: Do we want babies, or do we not want babies? Choose a side,” she grumbles.

All of these issues have especially been weighing on Eden’s mind since Beckham was born just three days before the 2024 presidential election. “I was like, ‘We’re going to have a baby boy, and we’re going to have our first female president!’ I just knew it was going to happen,” she sighs. “I think that I was a little biased, because I got invited by Kamala Harris two years ago to the Pride celebration at her house, and she spoke just so freely about Pride. She was the first person to marry a gay couple when California legalized gay marriage. She such an ally, and she just spoke so easily about Pride and why it’s important and how Pride is actually patriotism, because Pride is saying, ‘We are equal to you.’ And that is patriotism. That is what this country was founded on. I listened to her speak for 25 minutes and I had tears rolling down my face the entire time, because it was just so genuine and authentic. Kamala really did have this joyfulness about her. And then there’s the other side, which is not that. So, I was like, of course any sane person is [going to vote for Harris]. And I thought [Beckham] was going to be born into this new era.”

Unfortunately, that did not happen, but Eden hasn’t given up hope. “My biggest accomplishment will be raising a baby who loves all people and grow him into a man who is an ally and stands up for the right things and is on the right side of history. Because I think especially at this moment in time, we need incredible men,” she declares. “This baby is being born into a world where he has ‘guncles,’ gay aunts, straight uncles, straight aunts, and two moms. And I feel like it’s just such a beautiful responsibility to get to raise a little baby boy in this world right now.”

And as an artist, Eden will continue to honor her responsibly to her chosen family as well. “I will always fight for my community,” she says. “I’ll always fight against hate. I’ll always fight for love. That is just where my heart is and where I will always be. I will never be afraid to talk about where I am in life. And I always want to be the bridge that puts people together, instead of setting that bridge on fire.”

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