From Cherry Valley to Country Calling: Carter Faith’s fast track to country stardom
A few years ago, Carter Faith was doing what plenty of aspiring country singers do in Nashville: writing songs, playing shows and trying to turn a collection of good songs into a career.
Faith was building her audience the slow, yet earnest, way, developing her songwriting and figuring out what kind of artist she wanted to be.
Now, she is opening stadium shows for Post Malone, earning an Academy of Country Music nomination for her debut album and joining the Grand Ole Opry's NextStage class of artists to watch.
That jump makes Faith's upcoming appearance at Country Calling particularly interesting. It's hard not to draw a parallel with Ella Langley.
Langley was part of the Country Calling lineup in 2024, when she was still building her audience and playing one of the festival's smaller stages. Two years later, she has become one of the most recognizable young names in country music. Her debut album, Hungover, produced the breakout hit “you look like you love me,” earned her major award nominations and helped turn her into a regular presence near the top of country festival lineups.
Faith is now on a similar trajectory.
Like Langley, she spent years developing as a songwriter and performer before the wider country audience caught on. Faith started writing songs as a teenager in North Carolina before moving to Nashville, where she worked her way through the city's songwriting scene and small venues. Her early releases began building an audience online, eventually leading to a deal with MCA Nashville and the album that would change the scale of her career.
Released in 2025, Cherry Valley introduced a much bigger audience to Faith's distinctive songwriting and the world she had been building around it. The album is filled with characters, stories and the kind of specific details that give her songs a personality beyond their melodies. Tracks like “Bar Star,” “Grudge” and “Arrows (Die For That Man)” helped establish Faith as one of the more distinctive new voices in country music.
The response has moved quickly. Faith has sold out Nashville headline shows, played the Grand Ole Opry more than a dozen times and landed opening slots with artists including Langley, Carly Pearce and Post Malone. She has also been named to the Grand Ole Opry's 2026 NextStage class and earned an ACM nomination for Cherry Valley.
Then there is the Post Malone tour, which is about as far removed from those early Nashville rooms as it gets. Faith joined Malone and Jelly Roll for the 2026 Big Ass Stadium Tour, putting her in front of audiences measured in the tens of thousands and introducing her music to a crowd well beyond the country festival circuit.
That kind of rapid rise makes the Country Calling stage feel like another marker in the progression. Faith will play the festival on October 3 alongside Chris Stapleton, Miranda Lambert, Brothers Osborne, Dustin Lynch, Charley Crockett and more.
Two years ago, Ella Langley was in a similar position on this same festival's lineup. She was already making noise, but she was still a rising name working her way up the bill. Since then, her career has exploded.
Faith's story isn't identical, and there's no guarantee the next two years will follow the same script, but there seems to be glimpses of greatness hiding behind
