Hailey Whitters Makes a Case for Country Stardom on The Dream

Last year, the Iowa-raised, Nashville-based singer/songwriter Hailey Whitters released “Ten Year Town,” an emotional number about something country artists have been moaning about for the entirety of the genre’s existence: small towns, how they trap us and how they’re always there waiting, even if you’re lucky enough to make it out.

But “Ten Year Town,” now the opener on Whitters’ new album The Dream—which she fully funded herself with money she earned waiting tables and plucked from her savings—doesn’t feel sorry for itself, or bemoan a geographical situation. Co-written by country great Brandy Clark, “Ten Year Town” doesn’t just long for escape, it actually manifests Whitters’ departure. In the first verse, she admits, “thought I’d be a big star now,” but she’s still wasting away in a home that wasn’t supposed to be permanent. Yet, her outlook remains overwhelmingly positive. “Dreams come true and I think mine will,” Whitters sings.

As if “Ten Year Town” was some miraculous vehicle to will her success into existence, Whitters began steadily gathering acclaim last year, securing a coveted number two spot on Rolling Stone’s list of 2019’s best country songs and touring with Maren Morris and Brent Cobb. This year, she adds Tanya Tucker and Jordan Davis to that list. It’s just the right amount of clout to draw attention to the follow-up to her giddy-up 2015 debut Black Sheep. The resulting album, The Dream, proves there’s so much more wisdom where “Ten Year Town” came from. Whitters has continued to one-up herself with each single’s release. With this album, she graduates from Dream-er to doer.

Upwards of seven songs from this record are already available to hear, several of which appear on a 2019 EP The Days (also the name of an album track). But perhaps the most impressive of the entire bunch is “Janice at the Hotel Bar,” the account of a spontaneous confessional with a wise boomer at the downstairs bar co-written with Lori McKenna. Together, the pair are masters at clever, sometimes devastating, wordplay, and “Janice” is the best example of their combined craft. The extroverted stranger admits she prefers shopping for cosmetics at the drugstore, vodka over dessert and mowing her own lawn, but she also has some more consequential life advice, the best of which may well be her assessment of the male sex: “All men are babies and that’s just how they roll.” She also recommends staying off pills, except for the Pill, drinking a glass of red wine every night and occasionally allowing oneself a “good cry,” which is all just undeniably sound advice. “Go on and make a good living girl,” Whitters, posing as Janice, sings. “But don’t forget to make a good life.”