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Photo by Bree Fish

Carter Faith is one of country music’s most promising upcomers, with debut album Cherry Valley transporting listeners to an unexplored place with the click of a play button.

Cherry Valley features 15 songs transporting listeners to an imaginary, beautifully dramatized version of reality. Inspired by a road sign Carter saw, the world of Cherry Valley became a place where she was able to find pieces of her soul and years living in Tennessee within it. But she says her mind can’t live there forever.

“I compared it a lot to Alice in Wonderland,” Carter explains. “It can be beautiful at times, and twisted at times. It’s brought me so much joy to create, and then to see how people have resonated with it at my shows and online, but…I can't live there forever as much as I'd like to.”

Beautiful and twisted it is indeed. Among the standouts of Cherry Valley lives the single “If I Had Never Lost My Mind…”, an about-three-minute ballad wondering what could’ve been instead of what was reality, giving listeners a dramatic look into Carter’s deepest thoughts.

“I remember writing that song and just needing a song that felt cathartic at the time, and it did,” she explains. “As a creative I live a lot of life in my head and can sometimes feel like i’m going crazy, that song was just getting those feelings off my chest.”

From writing the song to the production, each step added layers of storytelling and helped set the scene for the song Carter says is one of her favorites she has ever written.

“When we set out to record it, I knew I wanted it to feel as dramatic and cinematic as the song felt to me. We let it build up throughout the track for extra drama too,” she said.

The album feels like a time capsule, transporting Carter back to memories of heartbreak, joy, and, most importantly, growth.

“I hear so many emotions in this album and it’s funny because now that it’s out I feel so much more connected to it and so much less connected to it at the same time. almost like a journal entry where you write down your thoughts and then can let them go,” she explains. “Whenever I listen to it, I can immediately be transported into what I was feeling at that moment in time when I created it, even if I don't live in that space at the current moment.”

But Cherry Valley didn’t come together overnight. It took years of writing, writing some more, and hoping for the day she could release a full album. Once that time came, she says her gut just knew which songs needed to be a part of her debut record.

“i question a lot of things in my life and career but i never questioned the songs, i always knew,” she says. “My producer, Tofer Brown, and I had been writing songs for years just hoping we could put out a full length album one day. When we finally sat down to pick songs for it, I think we both kind of just knew what should make the cut. It was songs we kept coming back to and loving, so when we went in the studio to actually make the record, we had a clear vision of what we wanted it to be.”

Her gut was right. For the first album in her career, she has already been recognized many times for the world of Cherry Valley. Most notably by Rolling Stone, after listing Carter’s debut album as the 18th best album of 2025. 

Carter remembers the moment she found out while she was on a plane on her way to open for Kelsea Ballerini in Australia.

“[I] had fallen asleep on my flight…I woke up and got bored so I paid for wifi and I had an influx of texts from all my friends, team, and family. I was honestly so confused I didn’t know what they were congratulating me on until I sifted through all the messages,” she recalls. “I was in full shock to be honest…I love my album and am so proud of it but to have Rolling Stone put me on that list, at number 18, made me feel so validated and gave me this sense of ‘Wow I did it, I made a badass record’.”

There are many opportunities to experience the world of Cherry Valley live and up close. Carter Faith is hitting the stage for her Cherry Valley headlining tour in 2026, but also as a supporting act for other major artists like Post Malone, George Strait, and Chris Stapleton, as well as performing at festivals like Windy City Smokeout.

“It's easy in this job to keep chasing the carrot and in turn forget why you started chasing this dream in the first place, but seeing my favorite artists perform always brings me so much joy and refills my tank. I can't wait to learn from them every night,” she says.

Carter Faith’s story of Cherry Valley may be closed, but the story of her career is still being written. Be sure to follow along on her journey as one of country music’s most authentic and promising artists.