If you Spotify, click on whatever playlist is curated by a man in a Nashville office who probably has the word “synergy” written on his whiteboard, you’ll likely be assaulted by a wave of bright voices, stadium-ready choruses, and lyrics about tailgates that sound suspiciously like they were assembled by AI. It’s a genre where polish is mandatory, and personality is optional. Anna Dahl’s Little Bit Country is a glittery-boot-kick away from the regular.
There’s a phrase Dahl herself has used to describe her writing wherein she likes to mix “the playful with the painful.” And Little Bit Country does exactly that. Its catchiest choruses are also its sharpest statements about self-worth. Its most stripped-down moments arrive when you’ve just gotten comfortable. It’s that sense of contradiction that keeps the record from flattening into cliché. Where some artists gesture at empowerment like it’s a branding exercise, Dahl threads it into her storytelling, making it feel less like a slogan and more like survival instinct.
Of course, comparisons are inevitable. There are echoes of Miranda Lambert’s unruly fire; the refusal to behave. There are shades of The Chicks’ balancing act between tenderness and defiance. There are even faint brushstrokes of blues, the kind that stretch the genre’s edges until they creak. But Dahl doesn’t imitate. She borrows the tools and builds something that feels distinctly her own: country-pop that sounds less like a radio single and more like a lived experience narrated with the volume turned up.
This is what elevates the EP beyond a pleasant collection of songs. It’s a document of a woman who has been in rooms where the industry tried to package her, and decided instead to package herself. And that choice bleeds through every guitar riff and every chorus. You don’t hear just the music; you hear the subtext: that authenticity can exist outside the industry’s assembly line, and that sometimes “a little bit country” is all you need to tell a very big story.
The record starts deceptively light. “Top Shelf” is Dahl’s playful take on a girls’ night out, but it’s also a quiet manifesto. Beneath the drinking metaphors and foot-stomping tempo is a clear-eyed message about self-worth: don’t settle for the well drinks of life when you know you’re worth something smoother. Then she pivots into “Take Me to the Ritz,” a song that shows off her arranging ear, with space carved out for electric guitar solos that carry more rock swagger than anything Nashville radio would greenlight. Already you can hear Dahl stretching the form, refusing to sit neatly inside one genre box.
By the time “C-O-W-B-O-Y” hits, Dahl is leaning all the way into country tradition while smirking at it. The song’s premise of falling for the boot-wearing, blue-collar man your mother probably warned you about could easily collapse under cliché. But instead, it sparkles. Her delivery has a Miranda Lambert-style sharpness, the kind of playful menace that makes the archetype feel less tired and more like an inside joke you’re invited to share.
But Dahl isn’t here just to flirt and swagger. “Weight of a Heartbreak” strips things down to a quieter register. This is the emotional centerpiece of the EP, where she sings about the ache of relationships fraying, the cruel tension between remembering the good and accepting the bad. The production of soft guitars and simple percussion steps back, letting her voice carry both the nostalgia and the resignation. It’s the song you don’t forget once the EP ends.
And then, of course, she leaves you with “Wrong Guy,” which doesn’t so much tie a bow on the project as it lights the ribbon on fire. It threads blues into her country-pop sound, all smoky groove and frustration about misaligned love. After empowerment, swagger, and heartbreak, closing with bitterness feels intentional: Dahl isn’t handing you resolution, she’s handing you truth.
If Little Bit Country has a flaw, it’s that it leaves you wanting more. Some songs feel like sketches that could be pushed further. At under twenty minutes, it’s less of an EP than a postcard. But maybe that’s the point. You don’t get a grand, definitive statement; you get a snapshot, and you’re invited to imagine the rest. Dahl isn’t presenting herself as a finished product. She’s presenting herself as an artist in motion, someone with a past that informs her present and a future that’s wide open.
And if the EP title suggests she’s only giving us “a little bit country,” the subtext is clear: there’s a lot more where this came from.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for publications in the US and former lead writer of Atop The Treehouse. Reviews music, film and TV shows for media aggregators.
