INTERVIEW: Carter Faith’s debut album took years to arrive, but her experience is key to its quality: ‘You just have to honour what the song wants’

Words: Emma Driver
Interview: Shalane Connors
Image: Bree Fish
Published: 20 October 2025

There’s no need to be a diehard country fan to find something to love on Cherry Valley, Carter Faith’s striding, confident debut album. The North Carolina-born singer and songwriter lives in Nashville and has been writing and recording for five years, with a string of singles that have built her reputation and fan base, brick by brick. Tracks like ‘Cowboy Forever’, ‘Man’ and ‘Strong Stuff’ established her musical character – a grown-up country girl with a big voice living life in full colour, all cowboy boots, beer-soaked bars, unstable yet exhilarating men, and honest musings on herself. No passive, dainty gestures in sight.

But there’s also a big dose of smart and careful songcraft in Faith’s songs. She’s a writer, no doubt about it, and knows exactly how to deliver a musical gut-punch with maximum precision. Her voice is an instrument she knows intimately – when to let it loose, and when to pull back, dial down the twang and let a song speak for itself.

Opening track ‘Cherry Valley’ captures all of this in four minutes. It’s a mini-epic, a rollercoaster introduction for listeners new to Faith’s world. Regret and yearning are soaked into the bones of the song. “If I could do it all again, I’d never leave heaven / … I’d never let you go,” Faith sings, just as the song shifts into a minor key, changing shape like the valley of its title. Strings push the intensity up a notch, and by halfway through Faith is swooping around her impressive vocal range with strength and conviction. It’s something more than nostalgia – more like a deep understanding that a mistake has been made, and a divine happiness has been thrown over for an alternative that hasn’t come close to matching up.

Wipe away the tears, though, because ‘Sex, Drugs, & Country Music’ is stepping over to your bar table to check you out. It’s a standout track that Faith says she wrote in half an hour, laying out her own holy trinity: “I met the birds and bees / The Highwaymen and weed / And once I tried all three …” It’s truthful and mischievous, and it doesn’t mess around; Faith isn’t interested in fake virtue. “I tell my dad that song’s a metaphor, for sure, but it’s very true,” she told Apple Music. The template is vintage country, complete with pedal steel and sweeps of backing vocals that could be straight from the ’60s – all deliberate, since the era inspired the whole album (as Faith tells us in the interview below).

Faith has often sung about her own psychology, an instability that troubles her but gives her plenty to reflect on. In ‘If I Had Never Lost My Mind’, she treads a path she knows, as the “chemicals in my brain” do their terrible work. “If I was a girl who wasn’t deranged …” she sings, remembering a time when “I couldn’t stop it, and you couldn’t take it.” The subtle boom of a kick drum draws the song into ominous territory, but strings add hope – it’s not a song of despair after all, but one of resignation, and a lot of self-knowledge.

‘Bar Star’ turns the focus onto unsteady but appealing men. It’s stacked with witty lines, and the images of a man who is a “damn livin’ drinkin’ work of art” are colourful and precise: “He’s burnt out and pretty much baked / But he treats me good, for goodness’ sake.” The tone is light and swingy, and the video features actor and musician Billy Bob Thornton, a new collaborator of Faith’s. As the seventy-year-old, five-times-divorced Thornton lurches around a karaoke mic, or swigs beer while fenced in by admiring women, Faith remains in the spotlight, shrugging her shoulders and admitting to her foibles, her voice sunny but truthful. The rapport she has with Thornton – they spent five days co-writing songs in Texas this year – is plain. Faith’s demo song in a similar vein, ‘Billy Bob Thornton’, was released earlier this year as a bonus track, not long after they’d met (“I want a man like Billy Bob Thornton / Tough as nails but his head’s a wreck”).

Love (and lust) lend their energy to ‘Arrows (Die for That Man)’, but Faith doesn’t linger on straightforward love for long. ‘Burn My Memory’ and ‘Drink Up, Baby’ imagine a lover’s life after a breakup, but again Faith isn’t much into despair, preferring to picture herself as the bright gem that some fool has let go. At other times melancholy creeps in, but it’s never heavy-handed. “We didn’t get it wrong / We just didn’t get it right,” Faith sings on ‘Changed’, a pretty, old-time track full of cinematic strings, fit for a dancefloor at the end of the night, a few couples lingering for a slow dance.

Then there are the character songs: ‘So I Sing’ takes on a child’s perspective as two sisters look out for each other, singing to drown out the family fights. ‘Betty’ is about a woman who’s bewitched a man, but Faith’s heartbroken narrator doesn’t hate her – she sings of wishing she could be just like Betty instead, without the venom we might expect.

Venom, though, is applied fittingly in ‘Grudge’, a takedown of a backbiting nemesis. “I’m pretty sure even Jesus thinks that you’re a bitch” – someone has been spitting nasty gossip, and Faith is having none of it. That kind of attitude and spirit are embedded in Cherry Valley, and over sixteen tracks there’s real songwriting skill, wit and heart. You might smile quietly, laugh out loud, shed a tear and thump your fist down in righteous fury, all in the space of two or three songs. And then maybe down a shot of bourbon, pull on your boots and head out to take a fresh gulp of life.

Women In Pop had the chance to chat with Faith about the making of Cherry Valley on its release, plus her lifetime of singing and her upcoming tour later this year.

Hi Carter, it’s lovely to meet you. We’re here talking about your upcoming debut album Cherry Valley. It is so brilliant.
Thank you. I’m so nervous!

This is your first album – that must feel huge …
It does. It feels very like a lot of things culminating on one day. I went to the crystal store. I was like, “I just need help!” [laughs]

You’ve been on the singles release train for quite some time now?
Yeah, I put my first song out in 2020, so it’s been five years, I guess. Isn’t that crazy? So it feels like a long time coming.

And it’s a huge album at sixteen tracks. Are you quite prolific with your songwriting?
Yeah, it’s long! I don’t know if I would call myself prolific. I just love to write. I would say I’m a songwriter first, so I’m always in that writing headspace … songs just come out.

Let’s talk about your voice. It’s beautiful – as if it’s from an old vinyl record. What were your influences growing up?
My god, thank you. That is such a compliment. So when I was growing up, my grandparents would always drive me to preschool. My grandpa would drive me, because my parents both worked, and he had a little bin of cassettes. So I feel like my earliest memories of music are of pretty old music – no offence to my grandpa. [laughs] But I loved country music. We grew up on country, being from North Carolina. And then when I got older, I would listen to people like Kasey Musgraves and Lana Del Rey. So my influences span a lot of ’50s, ’60s stuff, which is what my grandpa loves: Tammy Wynette, Patsy Cline, The Beach Boys. I love Jim Croce, weirdly. I love good voices, you know – I love an artist with a crazy voice.

Have you been singing since you were a kid?
Yeah, always singing. I it took me a while to have the nerve to get on stage, and I still have to work myself up to get on stage every night. But, yeah, I would always be singing … to my dog or my little brother in our house, and to the radio, you know. I just love to sing.

You get stage fright?
I do – strong, strong stage fright. I kind of hate being on stage, honestly. I mean, I’m starting to love it because I get to see real people who connect with my music, or know my music crazily. But I get really nervous to share my feelings. In real life, I’m not a super vulnerable person all the time, but in my music, I definitely am pretty blunt and honest, and so it feels like a whole shell of myself is being exposed on stage.

People say that you get nervous when something means something to you …
Definitely that’s true. I mean, if I’m going to a co-write [session] with someone, even if I know them so well, I’ll get nervous because I’m like, “I’ve gotta get in this headspace, gotta be open,” and all of that.

Is there a trick to overcoming that, do you think?
I think the people I’ve surrounded myself with really help, because I feel like we’re all in it together. I have this road family. My band is amazing – the guys are some of my best friends now. I make my best friends come out on the road with me a lot. I feel like my management team is family at this point. So it’s helpful to have good people around you.

Let’s talk about the band – what’s your approach to recording with the band?
I like to have a clear path [to] what I’m about to do. So for Cherry Valley, I knew I was going to record my album, and I spent months and months and months putting together a playlist of ten songs I love that are non-negotiable sonic references for me. Half of them were from the year 1966, which was so weird but makes sense. And my producer, Tofer Brown, did the same thing, and we both had this year – 1966. So much was going on in the world, but musically, so much was going on too. And so we went into the studio with all these amazing musicians, and we were like, “We really want to go to 1966. I want to emulate that,” with the fresh lyrics that I write. We definitely took that approach. It helped going in with a really clear vision.

That vision definitely comes across in the album. Did you record as a live band, or track by track?
We spent three weeks in the studio before I did vocals, and we did a lot of pre-production, planning out the songs and what I wanted them to sound like. And then we went in the studio, and the session musicians would record some of the songs live on the floor, with no click [track] or anything, and I just sang – and that’s the take you hear on the record. But some of them took a little bit longer to figure out the structure, and then I would go and do vocals afterwards. So it kind of depended on the song. I feel like that’s how songwriting is too. You just have to honour what the song wants.

You’ve released a few tracks off the album already, one of them being ‘Bar Star’, and I just watched the video starring Billy Bob Thornton. How did that happen?
My god, that was a crazy story. I met him in June this year. Billy Bob Thornton is actually a songwriter, and he found my music and liked it, and got in touch on text to write some songs with him. He has this amazing band called the The Boxmasters, and we were gonna write some songs … writing over the phone and stuff. And he’s like, “Hey, what if you just came down to Texas where I’m filming?” He was filming [the TV series] Landman there. And I was like, “Yeah, I’ll go down to Texas for a week. Fuck it.” And it happened to be the week of my twenty-fifth birthday. I brought one of my best friends, Jessie Jo Dillon, down there to write with us. And we just [spent] five days writing songs, not talking to anybody else. You just kind of form this friendship and this bond.

So I showed him the song I wrote about him, called ‘Billy Bob Thornton’. And he was like, “If you put that out, I have to be in the music video.” [I said] “Well, if I put this out, I’m gonna make you be in a different music video.” And he agreed to it, crazily – to my shock, honestly. [laughs]

I love that. And in some other exciting news, you’re about to star in your first acting role – in a Netflix thriller called Heartland?
Yeah, my very first. I’ve never acted. We’re filming in November … I’m so deep in the script right now, working on it, and the director, Shana [Feste], has been really helpful with me, because she knows it’s my first time acting, and I’m grateful that she had so much faith in me to give me the role. I’m so excited, and it feels very special, but I’m definitely nervous. It’s been a long time since I did something for the first time.

How do you keep grounded, with so much going on?
There’s a lot of mental gymnastics. I think I’m an artist – I’m a songwriter, creative – because I feel things so deeply. So it’s a really delicate tightrope walk, keeping that part of yourself so that you can create this art, and then also staying grounded so you can be a real person and not freak out. I want to be successful for myself and my art, but I want to be successful because my team has worked so hard too. It’s theirs. And I want that as well. So it’s a lot of feelings all at once. But I’m a small-town country girl: I talk to my mom every day. I talk to my family every day. I go back as much as I can, even when I’m exhausted. I really try to remind myself of where I came from, and of the real, important things in life.

You’re about to come to Australia?
Yes, so excited! My first time going to Australia was in March this year, so I cannot believe I’m already coming back. My band is like, “Oh my god, we’re going to Australia twice in one year.” It’s this crazy dream.

And you’re playing some pretty huge venues as well, supporting Kelsea Ballerini …
Yeah, the biggest venues I’ve ever played, and they’re in a beautiful country on the other side of the world. It’s just not real in my head. [laughs]

Is that going to be super nerve-racking with the stage fright?
It will be so nerve-racking. But I’m always the opener, so it depends on what crowd you’re in front of, and I never really know that until I’m on that stage. So sometimes no one’s listening to you, and sometimes they’re so tuned in. Honestly, I’m just excited to be in front of Kelsea’s fan base and her community – she is really inspiring to me, and I know her fan base and the community that she’s built speak to what she stands for and who she is. So I feel weirdly feel calm about that. I don’t know why. I think all those people are wanting to see good music and wanting to connect.

And country music audiences are the best audiences, right?
Totally. And my band will be with me, and we’ll be able to share this crazy memory. So I’m excited.

One final question: was there ever an alternate career path for you, or was it always singing?
It’s so interesting when people ask me that, because I didn’t decide to really go for this until I was gonna go to college. So I was, like, sixteen, probably seventeen when I decided to do this. But I look back on that time and I think, “Wow, I had no other plan.” And that’s kind of a testament to when you have a dream that you’re going to be committed to chasing. It feels like I decided to do this, but looking back, it was always what I was going to do, I think. There was just no other option in my mind, even before I knew it.

Well, they say, “Don’t have a backup plan,” right?
Totally! [laughs] It’s crazy advice, but it’s so true.

Cherry Valley is out now via Universal Music Australia. You can buy and stream here.
Follow Carter Faith on her website, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok