Hailey Whitters is a voice for a part of America that Nashville often overlooks.
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Its also an affecting argument that places like Iowa are country enough to sing about.
Thats not a surprise to the flyover states.
For anyone else, its simply a richly detailed exploration of the meaning a hometown can hold.
I thought you played a show and labels came out immediately and signed you, she remembers.
Thousands who had chased that dream before could have told her it wouldnt happen that way.
Nashville had broken her heart, so she wrote a song about it.
Whitters independently released Ten Year Town in 2019.
I thought Id be a big star now / Im 12 years into a ten-year town.
The WashingtonPostcalledThe Dreamthe years deepest country album, while the NashvilleScenenamedWhitters 2020s best country breakout.
WhereasThe Dreamwas rooted in Nashville,Raisedcomes to life in Iowa.
Its populated by stories about the people she grew up with.
Another song, Big Family, honors Whitterss five siblings and dozens of aunts, uncles, and cousins.
A few of those cousins live on the same street as Aunt Cindy and Uncle Phil.
When he leaves our table, Whitters admits she has never met him before.
But I think the more specific a line is, the more universal it is, Whitters says.
Those are songs that stop you in your tracks.
She knows she cant write trendy pop-country, so she has stopped bothering.
Whitters can tell the story behind it like it just happened.
I just remembered being a teenage girl and all those butterflies, she says.
Those are the boys that taught me how to drink beer.
Whitters hasnt lived in Shueyville for about a decade and a half.
Lately, shes been eyeing a second home here.
You know, rural Iowa comin out in their low-cut tops and jeans and dancin and drinkin beer.
She still remembers the thrill of playing here for the first time, between opening those shows for Morris.
I felt like a superstar, Whitters says.
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