There are few good things to say about pop country right now but the people who are doing good work deserve your ears, and Hailey Whitters is one of them. Whitters’ early material has a deliciously bitter edge, and after ten years of hard work her rocket is finally taking off with “Everything She Ain’t” hit 17 on Billboard Country back in June. That’s the closing song on Whitters’ new EP I’m In Love, which finds itself mostly devoid of the snap that gave “Everything She Ain’t” its staying power.
This is not a blog about happy music, so maybe that’s the real issue with I’m In Love. First off, I will say this EP is full of killer hooks and catchy melodies. I’m In Love is fun as hell and I am fully behind that. Whitters rattles off her signature one-liners at a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it clip, similar to Kacey’s Pageant Material era. “Tie’r Down” reflects that moment in country music as well, a clever character sketch of the perfect country girl: smart, a little bit reckless, definitely fun, but never overboard.
That sense of playing it safe, to me, permeates I’m In Love. Look — the lady’s allowed to write fun summer songs; goodness knows her catalogue has more somber stuff. But when we get to songs like “Countryside Chick” and “Mellencamp” that paint a glowing image of small town life, I start to check out. Both songs paint a warm image of country living, something that Whitters herself has skewered in the past. “Mellencamp” willfully ignores that singer’s body of work, other that strategically name-checking his bigger hits:
We’ll go shooting out the stars
Then boy you can steal my heartland
Talk about feeling small town
You’re my Jesus saves my hell and back
Born and raised my first six-pack
Boys these days they don’t know Jack
But you make my world more Mellencamp
Mellencamp has stated his preference for small towns, yeah, but the whole point of his music has been to protest nostalgia and Reagan-era policies that hollowed out those towns. His famously contrary nature was his attempt to resist the music industry apparatus that wanted him to write songs like this, ones that elide a sense of history and urgency for imagery that is “more Americana than them blue jeans or the Bible.”
I’ve always struggled to define the dividing line between pop country and Americana, but I think Whitters just pointed me the right way. Pop country wants to sell a Disney-fied image of “country” life, whereas Americana/alt-country might express nostalgia, but it also tends to acknowledge the warts. You know, like Mellencamp.
This is not to take a dump all over I’m In Love, though I’ve devoted so much space to critiquing some of the lyrics. But Whitters has been spicier in the past, and if she puts that to bed then I am concerned for what that means for other emerging artists in country music: you don’t have to dogwhistle like Aldean, but you better get in line and make your audience feel superior to their fellow Americans, because any attempt at fair and balanced will get you kicked out of Nashville, the perennial ten-year-town.