Front person of the year 2025: Karly Hartzman
In 2025, it would have been easy to give up. The art industry became increasingly underfunded, and the sociopolitical threat of fascism neared every day. Honesty, accountability, and vulnerability have never been more important than at a time when nuance, free speech and compassion are newly under threat.
To be the front person of a band means you must reckon with all of this. You must create music that is unique, inspired and honest. You must remain hopeful, but realistic. You must champion alternate ways of experiencing, sharing and believing in art. Far Out thought long and hard about who advocated for these values, and more, this year. One clear answer bubbled to the top of the mix: Wednesday’s very own Karly Hartzman.
This year, North Carolina alt-country group released their sixth studio album, Bleeds. Throughout the project, which began with the sure-fire song of the summer, ‘Elderberry Wine’, Hartzman’s penmanship takes a soft hand to the harsh extremities of torment and unfurls its edges into an origami heart.
We’re left with a unique, uncompromising stream-of-consciousness that dissects the personally excavated, corpse-like and confrontational, but retains a meandering level of myth and mystique. Hartzman writes for herself and her friends; by extension, this cluster of postcard offerings is addressed to all of us. Through music, scuzzy and loud, a community is formed. When everything else boils away, that’s all we could ever hope for.
Hartzman’s name was also drip-fed back to the Far Out team in countless other conversations. For example, up-and-coming indie-folk artist Daffo mentioned the frontperson when describing one of the best moments of their career so far: Wednesday’s powerhouse vocalist mysteriously got hold of their phone number, and got in contact with the nonchalant, simple: “I love your song, ‘Absence Makes the Heart Grow’. We should hang out sometime, or whatever.'” Not a few months later, Daffo was on tour with Wednesday, awash in the very same cheers growing louder by the minute.
Pedestalling and championing other artists is integral to being a great front-person; we’ve seen this behaviour emulated by Paramore’s frontman Hayley Williams, who has billed London’s best-kept-secret Tiberius B on her upcoming London show simply because she loves the music. We had an entire remix album so that Williams and Co could use their huge audience to introduce some of the next-best performers to a generation who’d be quite happy shovelling the same stuff into their forever-open mouths. Hartzman is no different.
The award for front person of the year also suggests an unwavering work ethic and a level of visibility that can be exhausting, especially amidst interpersonal change. This is true on all levels for Hartzman, who doesn’t have Instagram but, instead, published an incredibly personal essay via Vulture as a form of mourning for her seven-year relationship with bandmate Jake Lenderman and a reaffirmation of her unyielding devotion to her work: “I care about my songs more than I care about myself,” Hartzman writes.
Within the essay, Hartzman discusses the ballad from Bleeds, ‘The Way Love Goes’, as inspired by Merle Haggard’s 1983 ‘That’s the Way Love Goes’, which was, fundamentally, all that was left of the pair after endless touring had whittled their romance down to its faltering core. Her third vocal take, the first uninterrupted by tears, is the one we hear on the album.
Hartzman gives her all: “You have seen me angry / I know it’s not been easy / And I know it can’t always be, and that’s the way love goes.” Elsewhere on the album, Jake’s voice intermingles with Hartzman’s. Here we have love and other impossibilities shuffling through the sonic sensibility like a burglar slipping through the night, our bloody hearts in the rucksack strung over his shoulder. Hartzman’s friends often call her Wednesday. The line between personhood and art is blurred.
It’s not all tragedy, though; increasingly, the modern psyche is a kaleidoscope of fragments, washed out by the alienation of the spectacle. In this manner, through an endless regurgitation of signs, Hartzman is outlandishly astute and also funny: “We watched a Phish concert and Human Centipede / Two things I now wish I had never seen,” she sings on ‘Phish Pepsi’ after bemoaning the surreal experience of a funeral live-stream with post-Covid morbidity. This year, no lyricist captured the chronic dissatisfaction of the modern age with such deft grace and unabashed humour, equal parts optimism and nihilism.
When accepting the coveted award from Far Out, Hartzman had only gratitude in her heart for the year that took the rockers to all corners of the US. “This year has been really incredible,” she gushed to Far Out, before adding, “Lots of sold out shows on our US tour, and lots of fun seeing our friends all over the country!”
Next year, the world.
