Lilly Hiatt will release Forever on January 31, 2025, via New West Records. The 9-song set is Hiatt’s first album in four years, produced by her husband, Coley Hinson, and mixed by Paul Q. Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies, Hole). Forever is a raw, unvarnished work of love and trust that balances alt-rock muscle with singer-songwriter sensitivity. The album is a bold, guitar-driven exploration of maturity and adulthood, grappling with themes of growth, change, escape, anxiety, self-loathing, and self-love. The songs are intensely vulnerable, full of diaristic snapshots.
This week, Relix premiered the album highlight, “Thoughts,” calling it “a capsule of growth capturing the realities of adulthood: anxiety, self-criticism, and the unwavering balance of acknowledging self-worth.” Hiatt shares, “We were almost done making this record, and I was trying to come up with a few more tunes and get ready to get on the road. I had massive anxieties over things that weren’t real, and I knew if I just got behind the wheel and drove, it would all melt away. Also, getting older is trippy…one day you wake up, and it’s happening!”
SHARE LILLY HIATT’S “THOUGHTS”
SPIN previously premiered the video for the album’s first single, the driving “Shouldn’t Be.” The song meditates on the universal need to stand by your beliefs without requiring validation from others. Hiatt notes, “I wrote ‘Shouldn’t Be’ after a Mudhoney concert, and it was the first song I recorded for the album. I was also thinking a little of Olivia Rodrigo when writing it. It’s a song about standing in your truth.”
Born in Los Angeles and raised in Tennessee, Hiatt first garnered attention with a pair of early solo records before breaking out with 2017’s Trinity Lane. That album led to tours with artists like John Prine, Drive-By Truckers, Margo Price, and more. NPR called it “courageous and affecting,” while Rolling Stone hailed it as “the most cohesive and declarative statement of the young songwriter’s career.” Hiatt followed up with her similarly acclaimed 2020 release Walking Proof. Unable to tour due to the pandemic, she returned to the studio for 2021’s stripped-down Lately, which Uncut described as “captivating.” When it was finally time to return to touring, however, Hiatt found herself overwhelmed and uncertain. The world seemed to be changing faster than she could keep up with, and instead of embracing her comeback, Hiatt began retreating from everything she had worked so hard to build. “I was on the phone with a friend who said she wasn’t sure where I’d been,” Hiatt recalls. “I realized I wasn’t too sure of that either.” This search for answers—where she’s been, who she’s become, and what it all means—lies at the heart of Hiatt’s striking Forever.
“I fell in love, got married, adopted a dog—all the things I’d always dreamed of doing,” Hiatt reflects. “But I felt like an outsider watching myself stumble through it all, constantly critiquing myself to the point where I became so paralyzed I could hardly leave home.” She sought therapy and antidepressants, talked to friends and family, and wrote dozens of songs, hoping to quiet her racing mind. “There was this intensity where I felt so jacked up all the time,” she explains. “Eventually, I realized my life was passing me by, and the love I was living in required presence to accept. So, I started doing the little things you have to do to show up for the people in your life: listen, grow, change. I learned to expand my world.” Hiatt left Nashville’s bustle for a rural setting just outside the city, scrapping her previous material and starting fresh to create music that resonated with her new chapter.
Hiatt and Hinson worked quickly in their new home, writing and recording each song from the ground up and sending them to Kolderie to mix as they were completed. “Paul brought so much enthusiasm and dimension to the project,” Hiatt explains. “Each time we finished tracking a song, we’d share it with him, and he’d get really excited, which was affirming and motivated us to keep going.” That excitement is evident throughout Forever.
Forever will be available across digital retailers, on CD, and on standard black vinyl. A limited, clear green vinyl edition signed by Lilly, along with an autographed CD edition, will be available at Independent Retailers and can be pre-ordered now via New West Records.
