INTERVIEW: Carter Faith on her latest single 'If I Had Never Lost My Mind': "Finally, people in country music are allowing women to be complex in their artistry and their music"

In the five years since she first released music, American Carter Faith has become one of country music’s biggest young artists with over 117 million streams to her name.

Currently in Australia for the CMC Rocks Festival, her appearance comes off the back of the release of her first new music of 2025 ‘If I Had Never Lost My Mind’. The single marks an evolution of her sound, with the atmospheric single containing elements of rock, pop and torch ballads amongst her country foundation.

With a pared back soundscape that includes guitars, lush strings and the occasional electronic beat, it is a searing, emotional look at struggling with mental health to the extent it wreaks havoc on her relationship. “I can't seem to settle the shit in my brain / If I could just change, maybe someone would stay,” she sings. It is a majestic song that at times takes your breath away with both its beauty and its brutal honesty.

The first taste of more new music to come in 2025, ‘If I Had Never Lost My Mind’ is Faith’s first release since she dropped the EP The Aftermath in October 2024, which saw her collaborate with multi-Grammy and Country Music Award winner Alison Krauss on the song ‘Blue Bird’. It is the latest in a list of impressive collaborations which has seen her share a stage with Little Big Town, Keith Urban and Willie Nelson.

With a consummate skill to blur genres while still remaining true to her musical roots, Faith is one of the outstanding creators of country-pop in music today, with superb story telling lyrics to match the addictive music. We recently sat down with Faith as she was preparing for her CMC Rocks appearance to chat all about ‘If I Had Never Lost My Mind’ and her music career to date.

Hi Carter, so lovely to meet you. You are here in Australia playing some incredible shows, and I am sure you are going to attract some pretty big crowds because outside of the US, Australia is your biggest market in terms of streaming figures. What o you think is it about your music that really just seems to connect with Australians so much?
I think it’s because I really just don't take myself too seriously, and I feel like I've felt that vibe here. Everyone feels just, not so much calm, but at peace with themselves and they're having a good time. Walking around the streets there's so many people, but there's no people screaming, it's just a chill vibe and that's not how America always is. But I definitely in my music don't take myself too seriously. I kind of tell it how it is, I think maybe that's what resonates.

What I've always found quite interesting with country music is that there are an incredible amount of women in the industry, but it's always the men that get megaphoned. What I'm loving with artists such as yourself and new female voices in country these days is we are still getting their stories, but it's delivered with a ‘make room, bitch’ vibe but it's still so playful. How have you found navigating the industry, particularly the country music industry?
It’s definitely taken some navigating for sure. I'm from a small southern town, so I'm used to the archetype of that, but when I came to town I think I might have confused people because I look and dress very feminine and demure, but I don't really talk or act that way all the time. But that's women, right? We're complex. I think finally, people in country music are allowing women to be complex in their artistry and their music. You don't have to just be the ballad singer or the redneck woman singer. You can be all of it. Or at least, I'm deciding to be all of it. And I think a lot of women in my class of country songwriters are feeling the same. We're seeing Sabrina Carpenter blow up and say exactly what she wants in songs, and it's just resonating. So finally maybe the industry is starting to see that the world wants that, because women want to see the truth about who we are in music, especially with country music, which is talking about the female experience, whether you know it or not.

That’s beautiful. That leads me to your recent single ‘If I Never Lost My Mind’, this is such a beautiful track. You know, it's one of those tracks where I played it, and then it played again and again and I didn't realise it was playing again because I was hearing another level to it every single time. It's a song..
Before I signed with Universal, I met with some other labels and played that song, and I remember a man said ‘the song is very mature, I don't see how this will relate to girls your age’. And in that moment, I made it my mission to do exactly what the hell I want, because I'm a girl my age, and this is how I feel. Women have a spectrum of feelings, no matter the age, and I've seen people really relate to that song in a way that I hoped they would, but didn't know if they would.

It's lovely. We are intrinsically programmed to hear any beautiful song and just think ‘this is a romantic love song’, but it's not. And as you have pointed out, this is basically that anxiety that goes through your head, it’s what we do, particularly as women. Talk to me a little bit more about this track, because I’d just love to hear your take on it and how you wrote it.
iI had the title ‘If I Had Never Lost My Mind’ for a long time because, hey, I'm a singer songwriter, I'm not very mentally stable, you know! I i get a little loose sometimes, so I'm usually almost feeling crazy at all times and as a woman, you're made to feel crazy a lot. I was just analysing things in my life and feeling like I was wrecking a lot of things, not because I was acting crazy, but because I felt like I was acting crazy. The analysing of it just drove me crazy and I had to write a song about that. I had messed up a very meaningful relationship in my life, I dated someone for four years. We weren't right for each other anymore, but at the end of it, it was cannonball central - I went bonkers. I just had to put it in a song, because I couldn't explain the range of that feeling - I love this person so much that I'm running away from them. I'm running away from myself. My feelings are going crazy, which honestly is not that crazy for a young woman like myself, every day I have one million and eight five feelings, but I just wanted to put that into a song. I really love classic country, like Tammy Wynette, George Jones, and I wanted to bring that drama into it, because that's how it feels in my head. I love the weight of those lyrics, they're so weighty, because that's how it feels, even if it's just young heartbreak.

I'm so glad you said that, because it's one of the things that always pisses me off, this disregard for the feelings of youth, of young love, first crushes, first heartbreaks and friendships breaking down. It's actually worse than as an adult because you're feeling it all for the first time.
I totally agree, and it feels like there's no way anyone else has felt this heartbreak like I have.

Absolutely, so I'm just loving this song. I'm loving that you went into it with the attitude of where is the drama? What are my drama inspirations? Where are those songs that I looked for when I felt this way and I didn't yet have the skill to make my own?
Yes, exactly, and I think that's what's been really special to me, seeing women, people relate to this song because they're putting their own experiences into it, as we do with every song. But I think what has really connected is the drama. It's not all the lyrics, it's not all the details that I put in the song, I think people are connecting with how intense and dramatic the track is and the melodies and it feels like you're going crazy!

With regards to that your songwriting and what music does, you have an incredible voice, and you really know your way around lyrics. Have you always done this?
It feels like always now. I wrote poetry a lot as a kid, I have a lot of big feelings, and I love to read. So I would read, and then I would write poetry. I would find words in the books that I thought were beautiful, and write whole poems about them. I saw Taylor Swift play guitar, and I was like, I have to do that too. I was always just in love with country music, because that's kind of all that we played in my household. it felt like the artists were my friends and my neighbours, I'm pretty sure I thought Miranda Lambert was living down the street until I was probably a teenager! So at some point, I just connected the poetry, with my love of the music and I just never looked back. I was 16 when I wrote my first song, I was literally devastated over a stupid, ugly man, and I had to write a song. There was all these songs that I usually would listen to when I was sad, and they weren't doing it for me, and it just spilled out, and I have never looked back since.

It's so true! Not all of us can do it, but it’s like I know there's something I need to spill out, but I can't even get it from the things I listen to. I need to make it myself totally just for the catharsis of it. Did it help?
Yes, it was, and has been, and always will be, my version of therapy. I think that's why my songs are so specific and emotional, because that's the only way I know how to write. I can't go into a writing room, and I have a hard time writing other people's stories.

Your career is going exceptionally well, you’ve got a lot going on, you've got a ridiculous amount of streams, and it just keeps going because as you said you're delivering the words that women want to sing along to and feel themselves. In amongst all of the chaos, what has been your biggest pinch me moment?
I swear I'm not just saying this because I'm here, but when I got to Australia two days ago, I was on the roof of my hotel, and I could see the Opera House, and then fireworks started going off, and it makes me emotional, because I played guitar in my room at 16 quietly so my parents couldn't hear me, and writing songs and was so embarrassed to sing on stage, and from that little girl to here really made me emotional. I'm literally across the world, because people have connected with my words and my music. There's been so many times where I've felt alone and like I was crazy, and no one would ever understand me, and I would never be able to make them understand me. That was just a beautiful magic moment for me. I am here because people in Australia have heard and liked my music, and I can't really wrap my head around that. But in that moment, I was like wow, that guitar took me all the way here, I got to go to Australia because of what I love, This trip has just been really special for me.

That's really lovely. I completely understand that, I live here, but the Harbour Bridge showing up next to the Opera House, it doesn't get any better.
It’s beautiful! it’s like the first time I saw Willie Nelson, I opened for him so and I didn't meet him, but you get to go on stage and sing with him at the end if you open for him. I was on stage with him and he felt like an alien to me, because I've seen him on TV for so long. I was like, wow, he's real! And that's how I feel everywhere I look in Australia, I'm like this is a real place where real people are and everything I've seen is real! It's just magic.

‘If I Had Never Lost My Mind’ is out now via Universal Music. You can download and stream here.
Follow Carter Faith on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
Carter Faith will be performing at the CMC Rocks Festival in Queensland from 21-23 March. Tickets on sale now.