Royal Blue After Midnight

**Unearthing the Quiet Splendor: Lilly Hiatt’s “Royal Blue” and the Old Sore of Being Human**

There’s an idea someone once told me—that we hide the books that understand us best on shelves behind winter coats, or jam their spines between bestsellers everyone recognizes, for fear of being found out by visitors. I’d argue the same for records. A good country album will crack the ice on what you’ve avoided staring at too long; a great one, despite never making a splash, will huddle in your memories and play in your head when you’re alone, humming truths you don’t want your friends to know you recognize.

Lilly Hiatt’s **“Royal Blue”**—put out in 2015 on the Bloodshot label—never saw the general fanfare that I (maybe selfishly) feel it deserves. Hiatt is John Hiatt’s daughter, but the gene pool only gets one so far. If you want grit, sweetness, and the tumultuous heartache of a human being who knows they aren’t the first to feel abandoned but insists on showing you how it tastes in their mouth—this quiet gem is up your alley.

I didn’t come to “Royal Blue” through a friend’s recommendation or a late-night radio signal; I stumbled onto it one late summer evening, scrolling for something to pull me out of a pit. My father had recently died, my relationship was in free fall, and the gouges on my confidence were fresh enough that sad ballads sounded too much like mockery. Then, on “All Kinds of People,” Hiatt’s voice came through my headphones, flat and forgiving: _“I used to get so lonely, I’d talk to myself / Tell me everything I wanted to hear.”_

The first time I heard her sing that I thought, Yes, that’s it. That’s the voice that comes back around, that both tortures and consoles. The deceptive simplicity—the line between self-mockery and acceptance—makes this record a balm for hurts that haven’t healed in a photogenic way. I found myself walking through empty parking lots at twilight, repeating her lines, feeling seen instead of just exposed.

Hiatt’s approach is muscular but battered; resembling Lucinda Williams after three cups of gas station coffee and an afternoon spent on her own porch, taking notes. Her lyrics barrel toward confessions, break for detours, then lose patience and spit the secret out anyway. In “Machine,” a song about alienation and setting yourself in perpetual motion to avoid old ghosts, she warns, _“I’m a machine / Don’t touch me too much, I might bust.”_ Machines, after all, are reliable until they break unexpectedly, and the beauty here is in Hiatt’s willingness to jab at that unpredictability. I was in therapy for burnout then, priding myself on my robotic efficiency—her words revealed the cost, the cracks forming in my own shell.

But “Royal Blue” doesn’t wallow. There’s a pulse—the skipping ramble of “Somebody’s Daughter,” the stargazing ache of “Your Choice.” Even on the album’s title track, she asks: _“Will you still love me if I’m feeling royal blue?”_ Isn’t that the question we all hide inside: Who sees us when the mask slips, when the Instagram filters are gone and we’re looking up from the middle of a mess? I grew up with that fear—the feeling I was asking for too much just to be held in my worst moods. Hiatt somehow turns that need into a hymn, giving us permission to both ask and be answered, even if the answer’s brutal.

The album isn’t what Nashville usually churns out. The production splinters the guitar, wraps in a little broken-glass synth, lets the drums wander and fumble. What’s country about it is the storytelling: the fallible narrator, the bottle-toting wanderer, the person who’s survived both heartbreak and a sense of being a misfit. “Heart Attack” leans into that—the kind of panic where you’re not sure if your body or your spirit is really signaling distress. _“I was born with a heart attack / But I keep beating it back, beating it back,”_ she sings, and I hope nobody who needs that line ever misses it.

Critics who paid attention applauded the way Hiatt threads punk, indie, and old-school country—and they’re right, musically it pulls from all over. But for me, the thread running straight through “Royal Blue” is the prickly, anxious tenderness of someone who can’t help talking through their pain. I’ve spent years in private negotiation with my own anxiety, convincing myself I’m strong but not brittle, that vulnerability is not just a costume. Hiatt’s record spins vulnerability into an achievement, a survival tactic—one I hold onto when my own apartment feels too empty for comfort.

In “Too Bad,” there’s a moment where vulnerability turns savage: _“Too bad you lost a good thing, darling / Too bad you didn’t think I could sing.”_ She makes the anger singable, and somehow, that’s the alchemy only the best albums manage. There’s a wisdom in being able to admit the hurt—then walk away with your head up anyway.

My one quibble is that the record’s pacing sags in the middle: “Off Track” and “Get This Right” don’t quite punch at the same emotional weight as their neighbors. The sequencing sometimes muddies the arc of the record, making the emotional highs start to blur. But maybe that’s the point: even our best attempts at self-examination are fragmented, sometimes repetitive. Maybe that’s honesty in disguise.

“Royal Blue” is not a record for everyone. But if your wounds are still tender, your resilience still a work in progress, Lilly Hiatt offers shelter where she found only rain—her voice, cracked and bold, is the friend who picks up the phone at midnight and doesn’t hang up until you’ve finally run out of words.

Listen to this album quietly, alone or late, when the world isn’t watching how you grieve. I did, and I found a little light peeking through right where I least expected it.

Kroes den Bock