Charlotte Cornfield’s sixth album is the first she’s recorded since the birth of her daughter in 2023, an inflection point for her as a person and an artist. The album’s recurrent themes of personal growth and renewal, of love’s perseverance through difficulty and shame and awkwardness, are rooted there. Hurts Like Hell is the most open-hearted, full-voiced album of her career and also the first articulation of her future, whatever uncertainty and love it may bring.

Cornfield’s change in perspective is evident not only in her approach to the lyric—which now gives voice to characters and themes beyond her own headspace—but in how she approached recording. Hurts Like Hell is her most collaborative effort to date. Decamping to Philip Weinrobe’s (Adrianne Lenker, Lonnie Holley, Billie Marten) Sugar Mountain studio in January 2025, Cornfield was joined by a full backing band, including Palehound’s El Kempner (guitar/vocals), Lake Street Dive’s Bridget Kearney (bass/vocals), Adam Brisbin (guitar/pedal steel), and Sean Mullins (drums), with key contributions by Núria Graham (piano), and Daniel Pencer (saxophone). Cornfield and Weinrobe then recruited Feist, Buck Meek, Christian Lee Hutson and Maia Friedman to sing on the album. “Every musician involved was a dream collaborator,” Cornfield says.

Weinrobe not only produced, recorded, and mixed Hurts Like Hell, but served as a sounding board for Cornfield while she was workshopping songs, a huge shift for a singer-songwriter whose working relationships with producers typically began on day one of recording. Cornfield and her band recorded together in the room, with live vocals, minimal overdubs, and no headphones, working organically and following their instincts.

Cornfield arrived at Hurts Like Hell bearing both scars from her past and hope for the future. Standing outside of herself and taking stock of what she wanted her music to be in the wake of childbirth, she was brave enough to ask for space, for time, and for help from places and people familiar and unexpected—a group chat, songwriters she was fans of but wasn’t acquainted with, friends whose long-forgotten song leant her the chorus for a new one. Every “yes,” every voice memo, every shared file, every open door leading to this moment in her career. Call that moment what you will—an expansion, a rebirth, a breakthrough—Hurts Like Hell is big enough to meet it.