Caylee Hammack Taps Chris Stapleton for a Turbo-Charged ‘Small Town Hypocrite’ [Listen]
Caylee Hammack dials up the emotional power on her autobiographical "Small Town Hypocrite" with help from searing backing vocals from Chris Stapleton. It's a collaboration that the singer says is a dream she's held for a long time.
The song is Hammack's personal story of one of the most pivotal moments in her life: When she decided to stay in her hometown of Ellaville, Ga., to be with her boyfriend, putting aside a scholarship to study music at Nashville's Belmont University. But he ended up cheating on her, and their breakup caused the singer to rededicate herself to her dreams of pursuing music.
She moved to Music City, and despite a difficult road that even forced her to live out of her car in a Target parking lot, Hammack ultimately signed a deal with Universal Music Publishing Group.
Now, "Small Town Hypocrite" is one of the tracks on Hammack's debut album, If It Wasn't For You, which she put out in June of 2020. That project features standout collaborations with Reba McEntire, Tenille Townes and Ashley McBryde, but there was still one duet partner that she always dreamed of teaming with for this particular track.
"My one whim for this song was to hear Chris Stapleton accompany me on it," Hammack explains in a press release for the new, collaborative version of "Small Town Hypocrite." "Two years after I spoke this wish out loud in the studio, Chris agreed to sing the part I had written in hopes of hearing his voice on it. Life is a beautiful full circle sometimes. I am so grateful to Chris for singing this song."
For his part, Stapleton has kept a busy calendar of events, appearances and duets in recent months. He lends his voice to a new series of RAM truck ads with an Al Green cover, and he also recently picked up the 2021 ACM Award for Album of the Year for his latest project, Starting Over.