The End: Lilly Hiatt | Under the Radar | Music Blog for the Indie Music Magazine
Saturday, February 15th, 2025  

The End: Lilly Hiatt

A Dog’s Life

Jan 31, 2025 Web Exclusive Photography by Jody Domingue

To end the week, we ask Lilly Hiatt some questions about endings and death.

The daughter of acclaimed singer/songwriter John Hiatt, Lily was born in Los Angeles but grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. Growing up in a musical household, she’s been playing music since she was 12, and released her debut album, Let Down, in 2012. Her third studio album, 2017’s Trinity Lane (her first for New West), was her breakthrough release and was followed by 2020’s Walking Proof and 2021’s Lately.

The Americana singer/songwriter has released a new album, Forever, today via New West. Her husband, Coley Hinson, produced the album and Paul Q. Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies, Hole) mixed it. It has been four years since her last album. “I was on the phone with a friend who said she wasn’t sure where I’d been,” Hiatt says in a press release. “I realized I wasn’t too sure of that either.”

Elaborating on where she’d been, Hiatt continues: “I fell in love, got married, adopted a dog, all the things I’d always dreamed of doing. But I felt like an outsider watching myself stumble through it all, just constantly critiquing myself to the point where I became so paralyzed I could hardly leave home.”

Hiatt tried various remedies, including therapy and anti-depressants. “Eventually I just realized that my life was passing me by, that the love I was living in required presence to accept,” she says. “So I started doing the little things you have to do to show up for the people in your life: listen, grow, change. I learned to expand my world.” She left Nashville for a more rural setting and restarted Forever from scratch with the help of Hinson and Kolderie.

Read on as Hiatt talks about the songs she’d want played on her deathbed and at her funeral, her favorite movie ending, the animal she’d like to come back as, and why hell involves a desk accessory.

How would you like to die and what age would you like to be?

Peacefully in my sleep at about 92. That would be a nice way, just go to bed and drift off.

What song would you like to be playing at your deathbed?

“Nothingman” by Pearl Jam.

What song would you like to be performed at your funeral and who would you like to sing it?

Yikes! I’m thinking, “Bittersweet Symphony” and maybe sung by my husband, Coley.

What’s your favorite ending to a movie?

I love the end of Virgin Suicides. Such an eerie movie, and such a beautiful story and book!

What’s your favorite last line in a book?

I truly don’t think I can remember any last lines of books. I wish I could…but I did just wrap up The Secret History, and the ending was beautiful. Joel Gion’s book was hilarious and came to a hilarious close.

What’s your favorite series finale last ever episode of a TV show?

I like the way that Sex and the City ended with Carrie and Big together.

What’s your favorite last song on an album?

Going back to Pearl Jam, “Indifference” on Vitalogy.

What’s your favorite last album by a band who then broke up?

The Menace by Elastica.

What’s your favorite way a band broke up?

I like the way The Everly Brothers broke up, I am pretty sure one slammed his guitar down on stage and left.

Whose passing has most affected you?

I was really bummed when Dolores O’Riordan died. She was someone I looked up to in my younger years, and I wouldn’t be doing what I am without her. She was beautiful and brave.

If you were on death row, what would you like your last meal to be?

French fries and cake. But I am not into the death penalty.

What’s your concept of the afterlife?

Eternal peace and maybe a little roaming (fingers crossed!).

What would be your own personal version of heaven if it exists?

Quiet, and capable of going anywhere I wanted at any time.

What would be the worst punishment the devil could devise for you in hell, if he exists?

Oh my!!!! Anything with consistent physical pain…getting stapled over and over with a staple gun.

If reincarnation exists, who or what would you like to be reincarnated as?

I would love to come back as a dog that lives exactly like my dog Elvis does. Where people just constantly pet and dote on me and give me food and let me sleep in the bed.

What role or achievement would you most like to be remembered for?

Writing songs people remember.

What would you like your last words to be?

“Til we meet again.”

www.lillyhiatt.com

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