Story Behind the Song: Caylee Hammack, ‘Small Town Hypocrite’

Caylee Hammack's "Small Town Hypocrite" is the real-life story of her first heartbreak -- a breakup that helped push her in the direction of moving to Nashville and following her dreams of pursuing music. Read on to learn the story behind the song, as told in Hammack's own words.

I was raised in a really small town in south Georgia. I knew my dreams weren't gonna come to me in that little town, so I worked really hard, and I got a scholarship out of it. I was gonna move to Nashville, Tenn. -- ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to go to Belmont [University] -- and I got the scholarship. My parents were so excited. And then I met a boy and I fell in love.

My parents were very disappointed when I decided to drop that scholarship and stay with the boy, after he told me he couldn't go on without me in that little hometown. I took my dreams and put 'em in a box and hid 'em underneath a bed, and I loved that boy as much as I could. And it just wasn't enough.

I realized that if love makes you sacrifice your dreams, then it probably isn't love, really. And it wasn't. I found out a few months after -- just as soon as that scholarship was right out of the grasp of getting it back -- I found out he was running around on me. He said that the reason was he needed more space.

I decided to do what any rational woman does, in a moment like that: I decided to give him all the space he damn well wanted. I threw my clothes in trash bags, I drove to the Target parking lot on the south side of Nashville, and I stayed for a few weeks, did what I had to do. I snuck into a bar -- actually, Honky Tonk Central -- and I got a job with a fake ID. For two and a half years I worked down there, and I started over. I got a clean slate here in Nashville, and I got to follow a dream because a broken heart led me here.

But, man, I'm still keeping up with the boy. A lot of guys don't know this, but when a woman breaks up with you or you break up with her, we may not want you anymore, but we wanna know what you're doing, you know? So I'm keeping up with him, and it turns out that the month after I moved, he's moved into a double wide with a woman 10 years older than him with three kids. And the only thing I could think of to say is, "Ain't that some s--t! You said you wanted space! There is no space in a double wide with three children running around."

So I'm disgruntled, and I'm ticked off. The beauty about being a songwriter every day is, we get to go in and try to write something that happened in a very bad, dark moment of our lives, and try to spin gold out of it.

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