Charlotte Cornfield releases “Lost Leader,” the third single from her new album, Hurts Like Hell. Listen to the track wherever you stream music, and pre-order Hurts Like Hell ahead of its March 27 release on CD, LP, and limited lightning swirl Peak Vinyl from the Merge store in the US and UK. Canadian fans can order the album from our friends at Next Door Records!

Following “Living With It, which features “wraithlike vocals in very close harmony from Feist” (The New York Times) on which she “explores the grit beneath the surface of a painful memory,” (KLOF) “Lost Leader” is a character study about a broken-down frontman. Here, Cornfield places her narrator at the scene of an interaction between a musician and a fan not as a passive observer, but a tender documentarian of personal squalor and faded glory. 

Commenting on the track, Cornfield says: “This is a hard song. But I also think it's a little bit funny. Tragicomic maybe? It's about a tormented frontman character whose personal demons and poor behaviour are getting the best of him. The story is told in second person but there are two perspectives represented here: the struggling artist and the disappointed fan. Christian Lee Hutson sings the part of the ‘lost leader,’ and though he only has a few lines he delivers the hell out of them.”

Cornfield’s sixth album and her Merge debut, Hurts Like Hell 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.

This spring, Cornfield will embark on a short tour in celebration of the album's release. US dates will feature Hurts Like Hell collaborators Bridget Kearney (Lake Street Dive), El Kempner (Palehound), Evan Cartwright (Cola), and Nick Levine (Jodi, Great Grandpa). For more information, visit Charlotte's webpage or follow her on Instgagram.

Charlotte Cornfield on tour:
Mar 31 Brooklyn, NY – Public Records
Apr 02 Chicago, IL – Schubas
Apr 04 Los Angeles, CA – Scribble
Apr 09 Toronto, ON – Lula Lounge