Hurts Like Hell is Toronto singer‑songwriter Charlotte Cornfield’s sixth album and her 2026 debut for Merge Records, written and recorded in the wake of the birth of her daughter in 2023. That life change underpins the record’s recurring themes of growth, renewal, and the ways love persists through shame, awkwardness, and everyday difficulty, marking a shift from strictly autobiographical writing toward songs that also inhabit other people’s perspectives. Musically it sits in a warm, lightly country‑tinged indie‑folk space—acoustic guitars, pedal steel, piano, and an easy, lived‑in band feel—with producer Philip Weinrobe keeping the arrangements open so Cornfield’s conversational, sharply observed lyrics stay at the centre.Across its ten songs and 34 minutes, the album moves from the hushed, reflective opener “Before,” which recalls the first arrival of “real” love, through the title track’s “shy people love story,” where two awkward partners push themselves to open up despite the risk that “it hurts like hell when you’re in it.” Other highlights include “Lost Leader,” a slower but hooky character study of a musician lingering too long in a scene, the domestic‑wonder vignette “Kitchen,” and “Living With It,” a duet with Feist born out of a group chat for touring musician mothers. Closer “Bloody and Alive” turns the first moments of holding her newborn into something almost sacred, crystallizing the record’s mix of vulnerability and resilience. Critics have framed Hurts Like Hell as her most open‑hearted and collaborative work yet, a subtle but confident “level up” that reaffirms her place among the strongest contemporary folk‑leaning songwriters while sketching out a new, more expansive future.
