In May, a few days after accepting the award for new female artist of the year at the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards in Nashville, Hailey Whitters was onstage in Madison, Wis., opening for Shania Twain. Afterward, as she watched the legend from the wings, Whitters, 33, flashed back to her 8-year-old self “singing Shania Twain in [my] underwear in the living room ... and it hit me just how far I’ve come,” she says. “I set out to do this, and I definitely was hellbent on achieving it, but even the last few months have surprised me.” Her spring accomplishments also included landing her first top 20 hit at country radio. The winsome, effervescent “Everything She Ain’t,” released in early 2022, has spent 62 weeks on Billboard’s…
