Kaitlin Butts builds an entire social world around a fictional honky-tonk on Hello, Honky Tonk, an album that Glide Magazine’s review describes as the Oklahoma-raised, Nashville-based artist’s most fully realized work so far.
Butts has released three studio albums and a covers project, Yeehaw Sessions, while moving from small clubs and bars to opening performances for Sierra Ferrell and Ella Langley in front of crowds that reached the tens of thousands. Glide’s reviewer places the new collection within that progression, calling it the kind of record Butts has been developing toward throughout her career.
A honky-tonk filled with characters
The album takes the shape of a country narrative, with songs portraying people and situations drawn from Butts’ years of performing in country bars. The review compares its concept to Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger and Sturgill Simpson’s The Ballad of Dood & Juanita, while noting that Butts’ project is structured more like a rock opera despite its country foundation.
Lainey Wilson, a former tour mate of Butts, provides a spoken introduction to the imagined bar. The album then launches with I Wanna Be Bad, which Glide calls an especially catchy anthem about letting go and having fun. The reviewer highlights its tightly written lines and describes the song as an energetic opening to the album’s setting.
- “The Bartender” uses slide guitar and steady drums while TJ Osborne contributes backing vocals.
- “Never Really Mine” turns a breakup story into a self-aware country song about a relationship already coming apart.
- “I Make Cowboys Cry” brings a country-pop sound that the review compares with The Chicks.
- “The Joker” pares back the arrangement while preserving Butts’ combination of wit and emotional weight.
Glide also singles out Everybody Wanna Sing a Country Song, a light and infectious singalong that comments on country music’s current reach. The review says the track captures the way performers from outside traditional country centers, including Chicago, have embraced cowboy imagery and country styles.
Heartbreak beneath the humor
The album’s emotional range extends beyond its comic characters and lively arrangements. Glide describes What More Could You Want as a dramatic torch song about the experience of performing. The review also calls attention to Still Got It, whose stripped-down presentation leaves room for Butts’ songwriting to carry the track.
That balance between comedy and vulnerability is central to the review’s assessment. Rather than treating Hello, Honky Tonk as a collection of unrelated barroom songs, Glide presents it as a connected work in which humor, romantic disappointment and the desire for release occupy the same setting. The result, in the reviewer’s view, is an ambitious country album that reflects Butts’ growth as both a performer and a songwriter.
