HunterGirl named her debut project Tennessee Girl because the title, like the irresistible EP, is exactly who she is as a singer, songwriter and woman. Her nearly decade-long quest for success and self-discovery, which took her from Nashville’s famed honkytonks to the bright lights of network TV, eventually brought her right back home to Winchester, Tennessee, where she found her true voice.

As she demonstrates on Tennessee Girl, there are many sides to her warm and engaging personality. She can be both rebellious and vulnerable, confident and insecure. Whatever her mood, the common thread that flows beautifully through the songs on Tennessee Girl is raw honesty.

“When I was writing songs for the project, I wanted every song to be me, every word, something that I’ve been through,” says Hunter, who wrote or co-wrote all six songs on the project produced by Lindsay Rimes and Greg Bates. “People say, ‘Write from the heart,’ but it’s scary! My heart is a scary place.”

“I feel like I was going deep and pulling things out of my past that I have never told anybody or things I’ve never dealt with before. This project was my therapy session, but also my party session, and all of these different things that make me who I am. With every song on this EP, it is all true; it is all me. It is scary sometimes to be yourself, but I have never been prouder to be me and to be a Tennessee girl.”

“I’ve divided the songs in my head, calling some of them Blue Jean Country, which is me writing in my bedroom, like ‘Ain’t About You.’ Then, ‘Bad Boy’ is like the leather jacket side of my personality, so there’s a little bit of Blue Jean Country and a little bit of Leather Jacket Country. But it’s all me.”

Thanks to her impressive vocals and tireless work ethic, HunterGirl’s last few years have been a whirlwind of powerful full-circle moments and undeniable signs that have shown her that she is exactly where she is meant to be.

She was the popular runner-up of Season 20 of American Idol, where she was championed by show judge Luke Bryan, who said she was his “favorite female Country voice.” This summer, she will tour with the Country superstar. When she’s not touring with Bryan, she’ll hit the road with Kimberly Perry.

Her poignant song, “Red Bird,” hit No. 1 on the iTunes All-Genre and Country charts, and more recently, she became the first female in more than 30 years to solo write her debut Country radio single.

When HunterGirl was playing songwriters’ rounds at 19, she was encouraged by the support of fellow aspiring singer-songwriter Lainey Wilson. They recently became label mates when HunterGirl signed with 19 Recordings/BBR Music Group/BMG Nashville, and earlier this year, they shared the stage at Wilson’s sold-out Nashville show. She’s also toured with Luke Combs, Parmalee, Justin Moore, Old Dominion, Florida Georgia Line, Kane Brown, Alan Jackson, Charlie Daniels, Sara Evans and many more.

After spending six years performing seven nights a week in Nashville’s famed honkytonks like Tootsie’s, she will tour nationally as part of CMT’s 2024 Next Women of Country and return to perform at the CMA Music Fest. She’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Kelly Clarkson Show and Live with Kelly & Ryan. Music Row says she’s a “major, major new talent.”

“There have been so many career highlights, and this year has been crazy,” she says. “I got to make my Grand Ole Opry debut and that was incredible. That moment of stepping into the circle for the first time was a full-circle moment for me. I remember being a kid and watching it with my Nana and Pa and listening to WSM radio. I cried so many times that day.

“Sometimes I sit in my car and remember when I was driving to school or going to the bar to sing for eight hours and all of those little moments when I wondered if this was for me,” she says. “It feels like the world is telling me that it is.”

Nashville is only two hours away, from her Southeast Tennessee hometown, but it felt like it was a million unreachable miles for a young girl who began dreaming of a Country music career after hearing Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors.”

She earned her stage name years before she moved to Nashville. Named Hunter Wolkonowski, she was one of several Hunters in her class, but the only female. Her teacher dubbed her HunterGirl and the nickname stuck.

She began singing not long after she could talk and picked up the guitar at 14. “My first instrument was bass,” she says. “I was in a band and I wanted to lead it, so I learned how to play guitar.” There were few musicians in town, so she asked a group of men from church who were in their forties if they would back her. “I was practicing with everybody’s parents,” she says. “They were like three bonus dads.”

Her father worked in agriculture and her mother was a special education teacher, so they knew nothing about the music business. But they were supportive from the start, driving the young teen to gigs and helping launch a merch line. “I didn’t know how it was all going to work out, but my grandpa had four jobs and my mom still has two jobs, so I knew hard work was what most things took. I put pedal to the metal when I was 13 and played anywhere they would let me.”

After her high school graduation, she moved to Nashville and enrolled at Middle Tennessee State University, where she studied commercial songwriting. She began performing in clubs such as Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, Rippy’s Honkytonk and Honkytonk Central seven nights a week, eight hours a day. She continued this grueling schedule throughout school and for several years after she graduated. She paid her dues in Nashville for six years before auditioning for American Idol and becoming a show favorite.

All of these joys and struggles, as well as her personal and musical growth, are captured in the songs on Tennessee Girl, such as “Pretty Much,” the song she wrote with David Fanning and Josh Kear that was the last track added to the project. Fanning suggested they write a song about feeling good as a woman, and HunterGirl thought, “I wonder if I could write something like that because there are some days that I feel like myself and there are other days when I’m like, ‘Lord, let me be somebody else.’” She says, “But that day, I felt like myself. I remember writing that song and tears were coming. The moment that I felt the power and empowerment of this song was when we wrote, ‘Who the hell decided what pretty was?’”

Then there’s “Bad Boy,” which is about her questionable taste in men—“If he looks like an extra on Sons of Anarchy, I’m all in!—and “Bad Decisions,” which is about those intoxicating late nights that create a sense of immortality. But “Clockworks” reminds us that nothing lasts forever because time only moves forward. “Clockworks is about not having any regrets and living life to the fullest,” she says. “We are only here for a little bit, so we might as well be happy and take all of the chances.”