5 Things to Expect from Hannah Ellis' Debut Album 'That Girl'

We chatted with country songstress, Hannah Ellis about her debut album, That Girl, out Friday, January 12th. Here are five things to expect from the upcoming project.

That Girl features stories from many different times and phases in Ellis’ life and career.

“It covers a lot of ground. It covers the stories I was writing when I first moved to town and when I got here and when I met Nick [Wayne] and our relationship growing together, and also my growth as a person myself, my struggles, and also the things that I’m super confident and secure in.”

The debut project encapsulates a true one-of-a-kind introduction to the songstress.

“I always knew that this first record was kind of my introduction, my “nice to meet you,” and I really wanted to choose songs that told all the different parts of my story, not just where I am at right now, but how I got here.”

For Ellis, it was important to share different stories and musical arrangements that felt like “her” rather than to stick to a theme or specific sound.

“We didn’t get too hung up on ‘does this go with that or is this sound identical’ because I think – just like my personality, there’s a lot of different facets to the music that I love and there’s a lot of music that was a part of my musical raising if you will, and we just leaned into all the different aspects of me as an artist and me as a person.”

The single, “Too Much & Not Enough” was inspired in the writing room by the experiences of being a woman in today’s landscape, something any woman can relate to.

“We started talking about what it feels like as a woman in the industry and just as a woman in general, and sometimes the things you love the most about yourself, the things you do really well, somehow also end up being the things you’re insecure about. […] It’s exactly how I feel all the time. I love these big sides of my personality, but they also feel like something I am constantly fighting or trying to put in their right place.”

There is a special song on the record called “Still” that embodies the relationship between friends. It reads as a conversation between two friends too.

“I wrote it from the perspective of one friend to another, and I wrote it for my friend, whenever she kept kind of going back to the same guy every time he would apologize. […] It’s kind of a song of ‘hey loving someone is not always enough to constitute that person being right for you’, and I think it’s a unique song to me, because I am the person that my friends go to for advice. […] I don’t think there’s a ton of songs out there of one friend talking to another.”