Ten Year Town

Album: The Dream (2019)
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Songfacts®:

  • Nashville is known as a 10-year-town because that's about how long it takes to make your mark in the city - it's not like New York or Los Angeles where overnight success stories are common. Hailey Whitters had been there 12 years when she wrote the song, and while she'd had some success, including a co-write on the Little Big Town hit "Happy People," she often missed her family back in Iowa and wondered if she could keep sticking it out. The song resonated with anyone who has had their doubts while pursuing their dreams.
  • Whitters wrote this song with Brandy Clark, a Music City veteran whose career also took a while to get going.
  • Whitters had earned impressive credits as a songwriter when she wrote this song, but she wanted to make it as an artist, and it felt like the clock was ticking. "I was feeling very frustrated with my artist's career and wondering if I should just hang that up and just be a songwriter," she said in a Songfacts interview. "I realized I still had things I wanted to say as an artist that weren't being picked up by other artists as a writer, so I felt like there was a voice that still was there that wasn't being heard, and I realized I still wanted to pursue that. I still wanted to make records and I still wanted to perform my own songs. I still really wanted to do the artist thing."
  • Whitters released this song on social media early in 2019; it was her first output since her debut album, Black Sheep, in 2015. Unsigned, she included it on her independent EP The Days in September 2019, then as the first track to her album The Dream in February 2020.
  • This was used in the Netflix series The Ranch in a 2019 episode.

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