Photo: Robby Klein
Hannah Ellis blazed her path in Nashville putting “the boujee in the back roads.” The Kentucky-born singer-songwriter introduced herself to the world as the vibrant “life of the party,” reaching for her red wine that she sips from a solo cup.
Now, Ellis, 35, wants listeners to know “I also have a lot of depth to me.”
She released her long-awaited debut album, That Girl, on Friday (January 12). The 13-track collection blends Ellis’ bubbly, energetic personality with the sides of her that have endured heartbreak, faced insecurities and second-guessed herself, which she shares on tracks like her vulnerable ballad, “Too Much and Not Enough.” That Girl is her way of “embracing all those parts of me…and I learned how to love her.”
Surrounded by images of her album and single artwork, Ellis sat down with iHeartCountry on Music Row in Nashville, Tennessee. She spoke about That Girl — including which wine she believes best describes the record’s personality — amid an 8-hour stretch of interviews, taking place two days before her album’s debut. The “Karma On The Rocks” star beamed as she spoke about That Girl and her years-long journey in Nashville. Ellis spent more than a decade in Music City playing shows and writing music for other artists before shifting her focus back to her own career. She’s remained determined ever since she took her little sister to see Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009) in theaters. Ellis was a senior in high school, and she said the movie's storyline, empowering ballad “The Climb” and other elements ignited her passion for making music.
“Here we are at my debut record, and it's just like a breath of fresh air for me to be able to put these songs out and really tell my story as an artist,” Ellis, who co-wrote every song on her album, said as she met with iHeartCountry in Nashville on Wednesday (January 10). She’d shared bits and pieces of her then-unreleased tracks on Instagram, teasing followers with snippets of some of the songs she was most eager for them to hear. That includes “Still,” which offers a friend-to-friend message that Ellis predicts will resonate with many others, and “Replaceable,” for its clever play-on words.
1. “Country Can” (Hannah Ellis, Jason Massey, Nick Wayne, Parker Welling)
2. “Us” (Hannah Ellis, Jason Massey, Travis Wood)
3. “That Girl” (Hannah Ellis, Hillary Lindsey, Jason Massey)
4. “Wine Country” (Hannah Ellis, Clint Lagerberg, Nick Wayne)
5. “Someone Else’s Heartbreak” (Hannah Ellis, Emily Falvey, Josh Kerr)
6. “Karma on the Rocks” (Hannah Ellis, Emily Weisband, Jordan Reynolds, Michael Matosic)
7. “Still” (Hannah Ellis, Jason Massey, Jimmy Robbins)
8. “Replaceable” (Hannah Ellis, Eric Arjes, Jason Duke)
9. “Somebody Else” (Hannah Ellis, Ben West, Nick Wayne)
10. “Plans” (Hannah Ellis, Forest Glen Whitehead, Jason Massey)
11. “Home and a Hometown” (Hannah Ellis, Mark Trussell, Nick Wayne)
12. “One of These Days” (Hannah Ellis, Casey Brown, Parker Welling)
13. “Too Much and Not Enough” (Hannah Ellis, Emily Weisband, Tofer Brown)
“I feel like that with ‘Wine Country,’ that's when I really established, in my own mind, my role… in the country music family here in Nashville, which is I'm the ‘bougie country girl,’ classy country, whatever you want to call it,” Ellis said of That Girl, including collaborating with the creative team on the carefully-planned imagery. “I’m going to drink my wine, but I'm going to have it in a solo cup. I'm going to go to the nice steak dinner, but I can also go to the fish fry if I need to. …Yes, I am bright and vivacious, but I also have a lot of depth to me, and that's going to really show in this record. …I mean, on impact, it's bright and it's bubbly and it's fun, but then there is so much more to the picture when you start to look a little deeper.”
Ellis has already taken note of how her music resonates with fans, including when she joined fellow Kentucky native Carly Pearce on the “Country Music Made Me Do It” star’s fall headlining tour. Ellis remembered taking the stage in Madison, Wisconsin, where the crowd screamed as she took the stage and raised their cell phone lights in the air as they sang together. The band stopped playing as Ellis savored that moment. Her husband, fellow singer-songwriter Nick Wayne, filmed a video of that moment from the stage. Ellis remembered thinking, “this is what I live for.”
“There's never been days where I didn't think this was what I was supposed to be. Not one,” Ellis said as she reflected on her journey in Nashville so far. “I felt it in my bones that night [that she took her sister to see the Hannah Montana movie], and I've known it ever since. I feel like (God) gave me a voice, literally and figuratively. He gave me something to say, and I think that I do have a unique way of saying it, and I think that it is going to resonate with people, and this record is just the beginning of that.”
Ellis captured her debut chapter in three words: authenticity, vulnerability and content, because “when I look at this project, there’s nothing panicked in me… It feels like a full thought. It feels finished.”
The wine she’d “pair” with That Girl?
“The wine I'm super obsessed with right now is called a GSM. It's a Grenache-Syrah-Mourvedre. It's a blend,” Ellis said. “First of all, it's a blend, just like this record. …Grenache is really sweet, Syrah has some spiciness to it, and a Mourvedre has got a lot more body to it. So, you have all these different parts that you mix together to make up one product that is, in my opinion, the ideal version of all those three products. …it's full-bodied. It has a lot of flavor. It has a lot going on, but it doesn't have the bite of some of the bigger reds. …After each drink, it kind of leaves you with a fresh feeling.”
Ellis, gearing up for a year of tour dates and festival performances, anticipated “the biggest exhale” on Friday night, now that her debut album has released. She plans to “have some champagne,” and “sing along to all my own music and jam out to this record that we have put blood, sweat, tears — happy tears, sad tears — into.
“I honestly just couldn't be more proud of what I've made.”
Listen to some of the That Girl tracks below, and find the full album on iHeartRadio here.