Listen: Juliana Hatfield breaks down on 'Fall Apart'

This is an exclusive song premiere, part of WBUR's effort to highlight New England musicians.

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Many city dwellers dream of moving to the country for a blissful, peaceful existence.

But it’s not that simple, as Boston rock heroine Juliana Hatfield discovered. After 15 years of renting an apartment in Central Square, Hatfield moved to more spacious digs in the Amherst area in 2023. Her dream was to live next door to one of her best friends and enjoy days with her canine companion.

But soon after, both her friend and her dog passed away. Hatfield also realized that, as she put it, “one person’s tranquility is another person’s terrifying silence.”

Much of Hatfield’s forthcoming LP, “Lightning Might Strike,” grapples with her uprooting and new life. The lead track, “Fall Apart,” goes a bit deeper, examining how early traumas can lead to the occasional adult breakdown.

“Trauma is a big word,” she said. “It means a lot of different things to different people, depending on how you look at it. And it’s a bit of a trendy word. But it’s a real phenomenon.”

“I don’t exactly remember what happened/ I must have pushed it out of my mind,” sings Hatfield over the opening chords. Hatfield said that writing about a heavy subject like repressed memory “is kind of stuff that I don't really talk to people about. In my day-to-day life, I like to laugh, and I’m very reticent and shy also. So the music is a great way for me to communicate and talk about these dark things.”

While the subject may be serious, Hatfield’s penchant for writing catchy and upbeat pop songs remains strong some 21 albums into her career.

“I love melodies and major chords,” said Hatfield. “So I do love to mix dark, heavy emotions with fun, uplifting pop music. Maybe that’s perverse, but that’s what I do. And some people don’t even notice that what I'm singing about is so dark. They just like the sound. And that’s fine — I love that.”

The bridge is a dream-like sequence where the singer sees her only guitar get thrown into the deep end and she dives in to rescue the instrument. “That was a metaphor of how I felt I was treated by some people in my past — that they would take the one thing that means so much to me and just toss it away as if it were garbage,” she explained.

In the song, Hatfield refers to the guitar as “she” and the person who tosses it  “he,” something that was an unconscious decision. “I wonder if anyone picks up on that,” she said slyly.

After she wrote the song, Hatfield realized that one of the verses, which mentions being “the only sister,” inadvertently referenced one of her most well-known songs, “My Sister.”

“In a bigger sense, the music that I make is like the sister that I never had,” she said.

One of the reasons Hatfield moved to somewhere more rural was to focus on home recording (although she admits none of her Cambridge neighbors had ever complained). After sketching out demos of the songs, she sent them to her Boston-based rhythm section: bassist Ed Valauskas and drummer Chris Anzalone.

Even though technology would allow Hatfield to make the whole record herself, the notorious luddite said she still wants “the human touch from the real analog drums and the bass.”

Ultimately, Hatfield considers “Fall Apart” to be an optimistic song. “I do make a point to say I fall apart now and then. It's not that I have fallen apart and you can never put me back together,” she said. “I'm just talking about things that are real. Yes, I fall apart sometimes, but I get back on the horse. This is life.”

“Lightning Might Strike” is out Dec. 12. Juliana Hatfield plays The Burren in Somerville Dec. 14.

Note: The audio for WBUR's music premieres comes down after the track is released. You could still listen to the track via the streaming service embed above.