HANNAH COLE IS LEARNING SOMETHING FROM EVERYTHING
Photo by Luke Rogers
Sometimes it’s okay to not give it another shot. Hannah Cole came to this conclusion in her latest single of the same title, “Shot”. Now she’s ready to give herself another chance.
After releasing two EPs Cradle (2022), Big Bite (2023) and a handful of singles, her latest release is the first step towards something of a bigger project. Even though Cole is not taking a huge step away from her old sound her listeners can tell this new and exciting era of her music is softer and much more delicate. Her growth as a person truly shows through her music.
“I was going through a very transitional time in my life whenever I wrote Shot” says Cole. “I had just gotten off my very first tour, I’d ended a very long-term relationship, and I was harnessing my independence for the first time in years.”
Throughout the time of writing, Cole used “Shot” to affirm herself when it came to new relationships, facing past guilt and the rejection of harmful stereotypes. She uses her music to resemble her growth as a person both in and outside of it her being her career. Using the analogy of a tree she says that she is always changing “even if you don’t see.” She wants the world to know that her progression is her own and she will not credit anyone else for it.
Growing up in rural Louisiana where few pursued music outside of the pop hits on the radio, Cole credits moving to Nashville as what inspired her the most sonically. Moving there in 2019 to study songwriting at Belmont University, she says that the exposure to her classmates and the incredible artists that surrounded her helped her develop the sonic identity she has now.
Of course that sweet Louisiana atmosphere she spent so many years in permeates through her sound in her music, saying that “It’s been fun to blend the sounds of everything I’ve listened to throughout my life whether it’s pop music or hardcore. There’s something to learn and gain from all of it, across the whole spectrum.”
When asked if she could have the chance to give certain career choices another shot, she replied first with the obvious artist answers of wishing she had used different lyrics, or if she could redo some of her songs. But at the end of the day Hannah Cole now realizes “that they’re just a representation of who I was at each moment. I love getting to see how my songwriting and I have matured together.”
The newly released single is a perfect embodiment of the ever changing Hannah Cole in this moment in time. As Cole will inevitably learn, grow and grow again, her music will change with her, but for now we have “Shot”. :)