Courtney Hadwin releases ‘You Only Love Me When I Lie’ featuring Little Steven Van Zandt on guitar, backed by a Grammy-winning all-star band
Courtney Hadwin is 21 years old and has already assembled a more impressive band than most artists manage in a full career. Her new single “You Only Love Me When I Lie,” released May 1, 2026, features a guitar solo from Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Steven Van Zandt, better known as Little Steven of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, alongside a rhythm section that has worked with everyone from Etta James to Prince. For a young UK artist who first appeared on American television at age 13 with a Golden Buzzer audition on America’s Got Talent, it is a statement of intent that lands with real force.
The track is a soul-infused blues rock ballad, anchored in heavy guitar production and built around the emotional toll of performing a version of yourself that earns love but bears no resemblance to who you actually are. Hadwin’s vocals do not ease the listener in. They arrive raw and fully formed, building from something close to a confession into a controlled rage by the time the song reaches its peak. Van Zandt’s guitar solo sits at the centre of that escalation, and the pairing makes sense on both a sonic and personal level.
Courtney and I had been looking for something to do together for a while,” said Van Zandt, “and she and Kevin Bowe write such cool songs together, so when I heard the track, I thought this is the one”
A Collaboration Built Over Years, Not Months
The relationship between Hadwin and Van Zandt predates this single by several years. Van Zandt has been championing her music on his SiriusXM program Little Steven’s Underground Garage, where both ‘Monsters’ and ‘Spellbound’ earned his Coolest Song in the World This Week designation, and ‘All The Love (Money Can Buy)‘ went on to take the Coolest Song in the World for 2025 honour outright. That kind of sustained advocacy from a figure of Van Zandt’s stature is not incidental. It reflects a genuine belief in Hadwin as a serious rock and roll artist rather than a talent show survivor repackaging herself for credibility.
Hadwin’s own quote on the collaboration is straightforward. “I’ve known Steven for a good few years now, and he’s always been very supportive of me and my music. When he said he loved the song and had a cool idea for it, I was so intrigued. I think it brings so much more colour to the track.” The colour in question is not just sonic. It is historical. Van Zandt brings five decades of rock lineage to a track written by a 21-year-old who is still in the early stages of defining what kind of artist she intends to be.
The Band Behind the Single Is Worth Your Full Attention
Beyond Van Zandt, the musicians assembled for “You Only Love Me When I Lie” form one of the more quietly remarkable supporting casts a single has seen recently. Grammy-winning bassist Kevin Bowe, whose credits include Etta James and Lynyrd Skynyrd, plays alongside drummer Noah Levy, who has worked with Brian Setzer and Five For Fighting, and Tommy Barbarella on keyboards, a musician whose CV includes Prince, Nick Jonas, and Miley Cyrus. The band gives the track a lived-in quality that Hadwin’s own intensity demands.
A portion of proceeds from the single will be donated to TeachRock, a music education nonprofit. The release follows Hadwin’s debut album ‘Little Miss Jagged‘ in 2025 and the completion of her first UK headline tour. She has 4.1 million social media followers and a trajectory that, at this point, has very little to do with where she started.
