Lilly Hiatt captures the restlessness of settling down with ‘Forever’

Coming out of the early pandemic, Nashville singer and songwriter Lilly Hiatt began to experiment with new sounds in the hopes that something might spark for her, helping to shake a sense of malaise that had begun to take root.

“I made some music on my own rather than releasing it with a label, and I started recording weird stuff at home by myself. … And I felt so lost for a couple years there for myriad reasons, and my voice didn’t feel like it knew what it wanted to say or play. So, yeah, poking around for a bit, meandering, it was important to me,” said Hiatt, whose explorations led her further from the more traditional country landscape she’d previously tread, her songs incorporating shades of the grunge music she heard as an adolescent courtesy of her older brother. “I idolized my brother, and he had all of that stuff – the Breeders, Pearl Jam, Nirvana. And it wasn’t just grunge, but it was Slayer and hip-hop. There was all this bold stuff happening when I was a little kid, and my brother was right at the forefront of it.”

These ’90s influences reverberate throughout Hiatt’s sixth studio album, Forever (New West), from 2025, which she described as “a hot pink rock ‘n roll record” given further definition by having reached a point in life where she understands more clearly what she wants from her career. “It’s becoming a woman in my 40s and knowing a little more what I’m about and where I want to go,” said Hiatt, who headlines a full-band concert at Natalie’s Grandview on Thursday, July 30. “And it’s being deliberate about that, and not being ashamed, which I think the record really shows.”

Within Forever, Hiatt deploys this musical restlessness in service of songs that are more firmly rooted, lingering on domestic bliss, the way peaceful days can pass in a blink, and the sense of contentment that can arrive in the arms of the person who was meant to hold you. “Everybody else disappears when you’re in a room,” she sings on the Belly-esque “Kwik-E-Mart,” a love letter to her husband and musical co-conspirator, Coley Hinson.

Elsewhere, Hiatt details the (allegedly) haunted home the two rented early in the pandemic with “Evelyn’s House,” their abode gradually becoming a space of refuge where the two make music and watch their problems disappear like morning mist. Then there’s “Man,” a lap steel-kissed turn that mirrors the feel of a heart set aflutter. “Where’ve you been all this time?” Hiatt sings. 

“I have a lot of breakup records,” Hiatt said, and laughed. “I mean, seriously, every record prior to Forever is one, and Forever is not that at all. And that’s new for me to have an album come out of a settled situation. But in that settling down, definitely a lot of things surfaced that were uncomfortable. And reconciling that emotional restlessness that came with physically settling was a new journey for me. I’m used to running. I’m used to being heartbroken. So getting used to maintaining something that you’ve built and that you love, that’s a whole different set of fears.”

With many of the songs initially having taken hold during the pandemic, at a point in time when our political and social systems began to more visibly corrode, it shouldn’t surprise that Hiatt embraced the songwriting in part as a means of escape. Witness opening track “Hidden Day,” on which Hiatt envisions a secret day tucked between Thursday and Friday where people can slip away and be free – an idea that has only deepened for the musician in the years since she first penned the tune.

“There’s a lot of pain in the world, and there’s plenty of heartache,” Hiatt said. “But it’s good to also have some space for joy in there.”