Rising country artist Carter Faith may have roots in North Carolina, but there's something about the freedom and mystery of the American West that inspires her music. This is most recently demonstrated in her new song, "Cowboy Forever," released Friday, July 28. The track, which follows the 23-year-old's "Smoke Too Soon," tells a heartbreak story from the perspective of a woman who realized the man she thought would be her "forever" wasn't meant to be.
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Beginning with a slow guitar intro that evokes images of a lonely, wind-swept plain, the song moves into a mid tempo, Western-inspired refrain as Faith begins to sing. The song is packed with imagery as Faith — with her delicate, Southern-styled voice — sings of the naive future plans she once made with her "cowboy."
"I was dreaming of his cattle ranch / His grandma's diamond ring on my left hand / What was I thinkin' / What was I thinkin,'" she sings in the first verse.
She then moves into the rolling chorus, detailing the doomed romance: from ignoring her partner's apparent flaws, to trying to "tame" him, to finally accepting that he won't change.
"He would give me his last name / I'd love the same cowboy forever / He was something I could tame / Was way too young to know no better / He won't change, not ever / Same cowboy, forever," she sings.
"It's a dramatized or cinematic take on someone not really being who you wished they would turn out to be," Faith told Wide Open Country in an exclusive interview. "When all the fun wears off and you're like, 'Oh.' All the flaws that you put aside at the beginning come back, which I think is a really normal thing. I wanted to tell that story in an old Western kind of way and just make it really cinematic and visual and make you feel it."
That haunting, Western-inspired feel comes through with an instrumental mix featuring guitars, strings and piano. Faith says the sound was inspired by a combination of artists including Dwight Yoakam and Lana Del Rey.
Although the song itself exudes a serious, cinematic quality, the inspiration for the song's hook, "same cowboy forever," came from a lighthearted situation. According to Faith, co-writer Tofer Brown came up with the idea when he encountered a Bachelorette party while playing a show.
"Tofer was doing a show, maybe in the mountains somewhere," she says. "He was at a hotel where there was a Bachelorette party and all the girls had these temporary tattoos that said 'same cowboy forever' with the groom's face on them. He stopped one of them to take a picture of it and sent it to me and Lauren [Hungate] because we were about to go on a writing retreat. We were like, 'Oh my gosh, we have to write that.' That's how we got the title."
The rest of the song's story is informed by real-life situations experienced by Faith and her co-writers.
"I'm only 23, but it's a feeling I've already experienced, and both of my co-writers have experienced it, so we kind of really just dove into that feeling and put ourselves there," says Faith.
Writing a song to heal from a situation or to understand her life is what Faith says compelled her to pursue music in the first place. While growing up in North Carolina, she enjoyed country music, but it wasn't until a "spontaneous" decision to attend Nashville's Belmont University to study songwriting that she realized she could turn her passion into a career.
"I moved here and really just fell in love with co-writing," she says. "Music is everywhere here, and I just fell in love with playing shows and writing and the whole process of it and just diving into a song. Everything. Honestly, I'll be doing this no matter what forever. No matter what happens."
Faith has since signed a publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group, opened for legends like Willie Nelson, and performed at the Grand Ole Opry. She will join the likes of Maren Morris, Kip Moore and Keith Urban on the road this year, and she hopes to release a full project of music soon.
As for the kind of artist she wants to be, Faith says it's her goal to bring country music to a larger audience and find connection with listeners.
"I appreciate all other genres and sounds and stories, and I guess I just want to bring that to country music," she says. "I don't really believe that only people from the South or that relate to the typical country story will like country music. I think it's a really global genre, and I feel like we're all telling the same stories. I hope people feel that in my music because I just want to tell simple stories and feel connected a little."
