Hurts Like Hell

Description

Hurts Like Hell is Charlotte Cornfield’s sixth album, and her first since the birth of her daughter, a pivotal turning point in her personal and artistic life. The album’s recurring themes, such as personal growth, renewal, and love’s perseverance in the face of difficulties, shame, and awkwardness, draw their source from this moment. “This experience allowed me to step back and gain a different perspective on things,” she confides. “The vulnerability, fragility, and intensity of it all prompted me to refocus on myself and take a step back.” Hurts Like Hell is the most sincere and powerful album of her career, and also the result of an intense collaboration. Based at Philip Weinrobe’s Sugar Mountain studio in Brooklyn, Cornfield surrounded herself with a full band, including El Kempner (Palehound), Bridget Kearney (Lake Street Dive), Adam Brisbin, and Sean Mullins, with essential contributions from Núria Graham and Daniel Pencer. Cornfield then recruited Feist, Buck Meek, Christian Lee Hutson, and Maia Friedman to sing on the album. The fruits of this work are immediately perceptible from the first single, “Hurts Like Hell,” a nostalgic country ballad that Cornfield describes as “a shy love story.” The band fully blossoms in Cornfield’s unique flow, as if cradling her heroine’s heart. The song’s vulnerability and authenticity attest to the mutual and visceral trust between Cornfield and her musicians. Their sound is somewhere between Nashville Skyline and Harvest: a warm and rich response to her poignant and hopeful call. The magic of Hurts Like Hell largely operates thanks to the harmony Cornfield creates. Carried by the voices of Meek or Hutson, the characters come to life before our eyes, as if by a brushstroke. The arrival of Kempner or Kearney reveals a dazzling facet of her band’s natural and explosive alchemy. On “Kitchen,” Friedman echoes Cornfield’s wonder at her crush, rendering this emotion at its peak. On “Living With It,” she is joined by Feist, whom she met through a group chat for touring female musicians and mothers. Cornfield approaches this album with the scars of her past and the hope for a better future. Taking a step back and reflecting on the musical direction she wanted her music to take after giving birth, she had the courage to ask for space, time, and help, from familiar and unexpected people and places: a group chat, songwriters she admired without knowing them, friends whose forgotten song inspired the chorus of a new one. Every “yes,” every vocal memo, every shared file, every open door contributed to this pivotal moment in Charlotte Cornfield’s career. Call this m