6 Must-Hear New Country Songs: Carly Pearce, Nate Smith, HARDY & More
Written by djfrosty on February 24, 2025
Women lead the way on this week’s crop of new songs. Carly Pearce returns with “No Rain,” while Hailey Whitters teams with bluegrass luminary Molly Tuttle for “Prodigal Daughter.” Avery Anna, known for her collaboration with Sam Barber on “Indigo,” issues a new song, “Mr. Predictable.”
Meanwhile, HARDY and Nate Smith team up for a hilarious-yet-pointed new track sure to relate with scores of people who have buddies in less than stellar relationships, on “Nobody Likes Your Girlfriend.”
Check all these and more of the best new country songs of the week below.
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Carly Pearce, “No Rain”
Carly Pearce previews her upcoming deluxe album Hummingbird: No Rain, No Flowers (out March 14) with this gentle, optimistic outing. Swaths of strings and acoustics elevate this soft-focus, hopeful track, with Pearce singing about how times of despair often dovetail with mountaintop moments. Pearce’s warm, earthy vocal tones highlight the song’s graceful melody. “If you never feel fear/ you’ll never need faith,” she sings, urging listeners to hold on during days of struggle. Since launching her career, Pearce has always managed to sound both timely and timeless, and this song floats in gingerly like a much-needed balm for society’s trying times.
Hailey Whitters feat. Molly Tuttle, “Prodigal Daughter”
Hailey Whitters’s latest release interweaves defiant, stomping country with bluegrass leanings, as she welcomes Molly Tuttle on vocal harmonies and guitar. Together, they sing a coming-of-age story about a young woman enticed by a new love. “She did a devil’s dance to a fiddle in a holler,” they sing, joined by a dazzling mesh of instrumental work from bluegrassers Stuart Duncan, Justin Moses and Bryan Sutton in addition to reigning CMA musician of the year Charlie Worsham.
Carter Faith, “If I Had Never Lost My Mind”
Faith debuted this song last week during the UMG Nashville showcase at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium as part of the annual Country Radio Seminar. Commanding, dramatic and deeply introspective, “If I Had Never Lost My Mind” is a post-breakup, emotional postmortem as she ruminates over what aspects could have changed and whether they could have halted the romantic bustup from happening. “I couldn’t stop it and you couldn’t take it/ I gave you my heart and I forced you to break it,” Faith sings as the song builds in intensity towards its final chorus, surging into a superb musical showcase for one of Faith’s most powerful, dramatic vocal renderings to date.
Ashley Cooke feat. Joe Jonas, “All I Forgot”
At last week’s New Faces of Country Music Showcase during the annual Country Radio Seminar, Cooke gave the audience of country radio programmers a surprise when she invited Joe Jonas to perform their new duet “All I Forgot.” The pop-tilted, radio-ready track finds the two contemplating how sometimes the emotional connection between two people is so stout that even copious amounts of top-shelf liquor fail to drown it. “I just killed a bottle and all that I forgot/ Was I was moving on,” they sing. Vocally, they prove they can match each other note for note.
Avery Anna, “Mr. Predictable”
Avery Anna recently saw her Sam Barber collaboration “Indigo” reach No. 48 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100. On her latest, she proves that while she’s known for moody pop-tinged ballads, she can also handle a churning rocker just fine, too. She’s hurt by a lover’s betrayal, but more hurt that her suspicions of his disloyal nature were proven right from the beginning. Lyrically, she goes for the jugular on lines such as “I tried to trust an untrustablе, cynical, typical, self-centered man,” as the song builds from a pensive, sparse piano track to a rock-seared, scathing indictment.
Nate Smith and HARDY, “Nobody Likes Your Girlfriend”
Country music hitmakers Nate Smith (“World on Fire”) and HARDY (“Truck Bed”) team up for this slice of cut-to-the-bone, friend-to-friend honesty, wrapped in a country-rock package. Smith and HARDY offer up a perspective of friends directly laying out the facts that a buddy’s new girlfriend is far from beloved by his circle of family and friends and they have the reasons why: she’s mean-spirited, she hates the bands he likes, she puts her boyfriend down in front of his friends, and is likely cheating on him. “Everyone you love hates seeing you with her,” they sing. To the point and punchy, this is sure to be a hit addition to their setlists. The hilarious video for the song, featuring Kevin James, Sophia La Corte and Amanda Mertz, further drives home the song’s message.