Carter Faith has read the articles about Gen Z turning away from humanity’s oldest vices, and she’s here to say those articles don’t speak for her.
“Yeah, that’s … not been my experience,” says the 26-year-old country singer, whose whip-smart debut, “Cherry Valley,” features songs called “Bar Star” (about a man who looks good under neon), “Drink Up, Baby” (in which she waits for an ex “at the bottom of the cup”) and “Sex, Drugs & Country Music” (about, well, you get it).
“I’m from a small town,” she explains with a shrug. “What else was there to do as a kid besides stealing your parents’ liquor?”
That said, whiskey is a no-go for this tequila drinker — “I feel like it has the devil in it a little bit” — as is weed these days. “I had a good run, for sure,” she says. “But my career has changed so much in the last year that now it just makes me go too deep.” She laughs.
“I’m overanalyzing everything instead of just being like, I have no cares in the world, and nobody knows who I am.”
Indeed, the 12 months since “Cherry Valley” came out have been a whirlwind, with rave reviews, opening gigs for Kacey Musgraves and Post Malone and a prestigious album of the year nomination at the ACM Awards. Now, Faith is preparing to hit the road with Shaboozey — they’ll stop at the Greek Theatre on Oct. 27 — just as she’s in the running for new artist of the year at next month’s CMA Awards.
Titled after a Tumblr she maintained as a kid, the expertly appointed “Cherry Valley” applies a modern sensibility to a throwback sound; Faith sings frankly about lovers and cheaters amid arrangements that evoke the hand-played classics of mid-’60s pop and country. (Among her favorite years: 1966, which as she points out gave us both the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds” and Nancy Sinatra’s “Boots.”)
Not unlike Musgraves — her biggest inspiration alongside Lana Del Rey — she doles out these tales with an arched eyebrow. Yet there’s also a tear in her voice that can just about break your heart.
“Carter puts so much thought into her presentation but she’s so real that the emotion always cuts through,” says Wyatt Flores, who joins Faith for a moody duet, “Nothin’ Better to Do,” on a new deluxe edition of “Cherry Valley.” The rerelease also includes “Pearl Handled Pistol,” a rollicking trio number featuring Laci Kaye Booth and Baby Nova that Faith characterizes as a nod to Miranda Lambert’s Pistol Annies.
“I never want anything to feel too sweet,” she says during a recent trip to Los Angeles. “I like the grittiness of that song. You can’t just have a Shirley Temple all the way.”
Faith grew up in Davidson, N.C., a college-town suburb of Charlotte, and learned to sing along to the radio from the backseat of her parents’ car. (Also instrumental: watching her older sister and her friends make homemade music videos to Britney Spears’ song “Lucky.”) At 16 she started writings songs; at 18, she moved to Nashville.
Scroll back far enough on her Spotify page and you’ll find singles and EPs from five and six years ago, before she signed a major-label record deal and began turning heads with “Grudge,” in which she lights up someone who’s betrayed her: “If I were a good Christian woman, I’d probably forgive / But I’m pretty sure that even Jesus thinks that you’re a bitch.”
“I was like, ‘This will probably never come out because it’s so aggressive,’ so I just said it all,” she recalls of the song. “I think that’s why people liked it or it offended people. I’m fine with either, honestly.”
The earlier stuff isn’t as funny or as headstrong as “Grudge” or the rest of what ended up on “Cherry Valley.” But the music charts an artist’s honest path toward discovering what she wants to say, which is why Faith insists she wouldn’t dream of taking it down from streaming platforms (as many acts do with older songs when they want to tighten up a narrative).
“It’s like tattoos — I’d never get any of mine removed,” she says — even the Bible verse (Corinthians 13:13) she got not long after arriving in Nashville. “I’m like, hmm, not really in that part of my life anymore.” One tattoo she doesn’t regret: the lyrics of Fleetwood Mac’s “Storms” scrawled across her hands. “I need to get it touched up, but it hurt like a bitch, and I’m so scared,” she says.
As she starts work on “Cherry Valley’s” follow-up, Faith says she’s working hard to preserve the freewheeling mindset that led to “Grudge.”
“Now that people are listening, I find myself asking: What do they want? Should I censor myself? Should I water it down? But I think people connected with my music because I’m not censored. So you kind of have to find it again.”
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
This year Faith contributed vocals to a glossy club track by the Norwegian DJ Kygo — very Maren Morris in “The Middle” — and in November she’ll appear in an acting role alongside Jessica Chastain in a Netflix thriller called “Heartland.” Yet even as she acknowledges the limitations that Nashville can place on artists — particularly women — she says she has no intentions of stepping away from country music the way Morris described wanting to do a couple of years ago.
“I’m protective of country music,” Faith says. “I can talk s— about my brother. You can’t talk s— about him. I love this genre, and I’d love to be a part of opening the doors a little wider.”
In part she means opening the doors to fans. “My meet-and-greets have shown me a lot about who my audience is, and it’s a lot of gay people,” she says with a smile. “I think my music gives people who may not always feel accepted in that space something to cherish.
“I love Tammy Wynette, and I’ve gotten to know her daughter Georgette,” Faith continues. “She was like, ‘Oh, the gays love Tammy.’ I think it’s the glam and the heartbreak and the drama of it all. It’s always been a thing.”
Faith also means opening the doors to artists eager to make space for themselves within country music — not least her beloved Lana Del Rey, who’s been promising for years to release a country album.
“I have faith because she must — she must do it for me,” Faith says. “I remember when she started covering ‘Stand By Your Man,’ and I was like, oh, here we go. She’s so country to me — if country is storytelling, then she’s a country songwriter.
“But the thing about being a Lana fan is that every album she’s announced — that’s never the title, that’s never the genre, that’s never the date. She’s a butterfly — she can’t be catched.” She laughs. “Or caught.”
“Catched” is better.
“‘Catched’ is better,” she agrees. “That’s some country s—.”
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