If you need a dose of hope right now, turn on Hailey Whitters’ record, The Dream: Living The Dream (Deluxe).

Born and raised in Iowa, USA, Hailey’s album is a love letter to songwriting, the thing that drove her to Nashville. The Deluxe Edition is her first release since signing a record deal with Big Loud’s imprint Songs & Daughters, having previously self-released through her own label Pigasus Records.

The album is a journey from start to finish on how if you stay true to yourself and your dreams, you might just accomplish them.

The album begins with Ten Year Town, her “breaking point” and a heartbreak song to Nashville, where it’s known to take ten years to make it, but Hailey’s twelve years in. The song sets the scene of what this record means to her; ‘dreams come true and I think mine will’.

From an ode to Iowa in Heartland, to a love song to happiness with Happy People (originally released by Little Big Town but written by Hailey Whitters and Lori McKenna), to the realisation that the tables she sang about waiting on in Ten Year Town are all part of living her dream in Living The Dream.

She says, “No matter what happens the success the charts the awards whatever, don't forget that you are living the dream, right now. You get to wake up every day you get to create music. You get to love, laugh, cry, hurt, feel all of these things. We are lucky to be here and to be alive”.

With the new deluxe project, Hailey proves to us that she really is living her dream with collaborations with icons including, Little Big Town, Trisha Yearwood and Lori McKenna.

All the songs are the perfect antidote to the anxiety we’re all still feeling right now; happy, grateful, hopeful. In Fillin’ My Cup she and Little Big Town sing “the secret is wantin' what you got”. She says that that line “is so relevant you know and just focusing on what we have and the good things in our lives. Those are the things that help us get through a global pandemic”.

W!ZARD Radio Station's country music presenter Madeleine Molly sat down for a Zoom call with Hailey Whitters to talk about the importance of thoughtful tracklisting, their joint adoration of Brittney Spencer, and how we all need to work to make country music more inclusive.

Broadcasted exclusively worldwide on W!ZARD Radio Station.

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