A man took me two-stepping last spring at a bar with peanut shells on the floor and a band that only played covers and by the second whiskey in he asked how I felt about fall weddings. Eleven days. That’s how long he’d known me. I was there for the dancing and for how his hands felt on my waist when the band slowed things down and this sweet fool was already sketching a future with my name in it. He was gorgeous and hung like a bull and he was ruining it. I kept looking at that pretty mouth thinking what a fucking waste it was to spend it on five-year plans. I wanted the heat without the paperwork. Hannah Dorman wrote a whole song for women like me and ‘The Fool’ wears its country-girl grin so well I want to buy it a drink.
‘The Fool’ is about a woman who likes a new man just fine, though she wants him to quit trying to turn the first few dates into a goddamn plan for the rest of their lives. She wants the flirtation and the fun, with room for a little mystery while she figures out whether he is worth getting serious over. “Slow down, cowboy” is the whole attitude, and Dorman had a reason to sing it with that much grin. After her “How Country Are You?” challenge videos started getting attention online, some viewers questioned whether she belonged in the genre, so Dorman answered the bullshit with her first official country release and enough nerve to settle it. Drawing on the Shania Twain and Anastacia records she grew up with, she gives the track a twangy little swagger that says she can handle the country lane and this man can wait his damn turn.
Dorman opens the track mid-eye-roll and you can hear it. “Here we go again / I’m so bored of the talking / Oh I’m nodding yes but I’m not listening.” Every woman alive knows that nod. It’s the one you deploy while he explains his career trajectory and you calculate how much of this shit stands between you and the fun part. Then she names the fix. “Can’t we just stay here in the shallow end of it / Oh why’d we always dive so deep in?” Smart woman. The shallow end is where the fun lives. You can see everything worth seeing from right there and the water still gets you wet enough.
Advertisement
Then she quits hinting and starts instructing. “Maybe I need to spell it out” is her last polite warning before the chorus lays down house rules. “Don’t need to tell me / All your history / We don’t need to dig too deep / Let’s keep the mystery / Ain’t got time to read your tarot / What’s better than the devil you know?” She has no interest in his exes or the semester abroad that changed him. Mystery is the sexiest thing a man can wear and most of them strip it off way too fucking early. That tarot line kills me. His whole deck is face-up on the table by date three and she liked him better when she couldn’t read him.
Chorus two is where the grin gets filthy. “Don’t need to tell me / What we gon’ be / Don’t need to know your shoe size but it might help, baby / This ain’t about taking it slow / What’s better than the devil you know? / The devil you don’t” That shoe size joke deserves a standing ovation and a shot of something brown. She slid the dirtiest wink in country radio past the church crowd and half of them will never catch it. Read her fine print carefully too. The brakes are for the define-the-relationship talk. Everything else about the night can move as fast as it wants and I do mean everything. Some men need to be reminded they’re not the cowboy in this story. They’re the horse. A woman can want a man in her bed by midnight without needing his mother’s maiden name and Dorman sings that distinction looking down on him as she saddles up.
Halfway through she trades the tarot for a poker table and ties the title in a bow. “Can’t we just / Keep our cards / Close to our / Chests, oh / Who’s The Fool that you’re tryna impress?” He’s showing his whole hand to impress somebody and she’s asking who that performance is even for. Nobody bets big on the third date except a man about to lose his ass. Then comes the little dare. “Maybe you’ll get it this time round…” trails off with an ellipsis that reads pure smirk. She’s giving him one more chance to learn the game and that’s generosity in cowboy boots.
Right when you think the whole song is swagger, she cracks the door an inch. “I don’t wanna open up / My skeleton’s collecting dust / My ghosts are haunting me they’re echos of the past / Self preservation, my walls are high” There’s the receipt for all that mystery. She’s done the deep dive with somebody before and came back up alone so the walls stay high and the guest list stays short. I respect the hell out of it. Guarding your own peace while a pretty cowboy paces outside takes discipline and she makes guarded sound hot.
Advertisement
Hannah Dorman is a Surrey-born singer-songwriter who spent four years studying vocals at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford before taking the long road through open mics and busking – the kind of road where nobody claps until you make them. She’s been a full-time live performer since 2019, working pubs and clubs across southern England which means she’s charmed more rowdy Saturday crowds than most artists will ever face sober. Her lane has been pop and pop-rock with an acoustic streak, and the Alanis Morissette and Avril Lavigne records she was raised on gave her a mouth that could start trouble in an empty church. Her EP 222 gave us ‘Gasoline,’ and she’s been turning out singles ever since like a woman with something to prove and the boots to do it with. 2025 brought ‘Bad Habit’ and ‘Sad Girl Christmas’ while 2026 has already served up ‘You’ and ‘Suckerpunched.’ This ain’t her first rodeo, and a woman who can hold a room full of strangers with nothing but a guitar and a voice built for last call will ride whatever horse she pleases.
That two-stepper of mine got one more Saturday. He showed up with his mouth shut and his hands doing the talking and it turned into the kind of night that never needed a five-year plan. His brunch invitation sat unread the next morning while I made coffee for one and I’ve thought about that night a lot more than I’ve thought about him. Dorman would get it. She turned that whole arrangement into three minutes of twang and made it sound sweeter than any proposal. Some men get to stay a beautiful question. He’s happier that way and so am I.
