If your country playlist has been mostly Kacey Musgraves and Brandi Carlile, Kaitlin Butts belongs on it. Her fourth album, Hello, Honky Tonk, is out October 30 on Republic Records, and it is a full-on, sequins-and-steel-guitar honky tonk record.
To reveal the 14 songs, Butts teamed up with honky tonks and music venues around the world. Each one revealed a song, including the Grand Ole Opry, Billy Bob's Texas and Cain's Ballroom. "Hello, Honky Tonk is really a world of its own," Butts says.
That rollout tells you what kind of record this is. It is built for dance floors, jukeboxes and the kind of bar where the band knows every Patsy Cline song, not for a background playlist.
The idea behind it
Butts built the album around one room. She spent a lot of time at Skinny Dennis, the East Nashville honky tonk, inventing stories about the regulars, and she told the Nashville Scene she kept picturing "the guy with the wandering eye, the lovers, the people on the dance floor, the entertainer, which is me, the bartender." A former theater kid whose 2024 album Roadrunner drew on Oklahoma!, she framed this one loosely around Chicago, inventing her own bar, Katie B's Honky Tonk Saloon, and giving each character a number. "It's me from the stage turning the spotlight to different corners of the room," she says.
Lainey Wilson opens the record with a spoken welcome to Katie B's. "Who has the most country voice that I can think of? And that's obviously Lainey Wilson," Butts told the Scene. Rolling Stone calls it her major-label debut.
Who wrote it
Butts co-wrote every track, and two are solo writes, "Introducing: Hello Honky Tonk" and "Still Got It." The co-writer list reads like a who's who of the women shaping modern country songwriting. Natalie Hemby, whose credits run from Miranda Lambert to The Highwomen, is on five songs: "I Wanna Be Bad," "The Bartender," "What More Could You Want," "Hell I Don't Know" and "Bacon Naked (Take It From Me)." Lori McKenna, the writer behind some of the most quietly devastating songs of the last two decades, is on "That Makes One Of Us." Shane McAnally and actor-songwriter Lola Kirke are also among her collaborators.
Where to start
Start with "I Wanna Be Bad" if you want the fun one, the song for a girls' night or a long drive with the windows down. Then go straight to "That Makes One Of Us," because a Lori McKenna co-write is where the heartbreak lives. If you like a little humor in your country, "Bacon Naked (Take It From Me)" earns a listen on its title alone.
Save room for "What More Could You Want," the Broadway-style ballad Rolling Stone describes as a song for the fans, the algorithm and the business, about a world that wants more from women all the time. It is the most personal song here and the one most likely to stop you mid-sentence.
How to listen
It is on Apple Music and the other streaming services, and Republic Records' store has the CD for $13.98 in a jewel case with a printed booklet. Save it for a Friday night kitchen dance, with the volume up.
