While the songs on Isabel Whelan’s 2025 debut album as BEL reflect the story of a small-town artist following her dreams to LA, the single she’s sharing today as a preview of her next chapter provides a glimpse at the road left untraveled. “American Dream” considers what a more stable life may have entailed in contrast with the industry pressures and on-stage catharsis inherent to being a professional musician. “When you’re 17, the main question everyone asks is, ‘What do you want to do with your life?’” Whelan explains. “By your late twenties, that question shifts to, ‘Did you actually do what you said you wanted to do?’”
Despite the existential dilemma at its core, the single marks a comfortable shift into the realm of upbeat heartland-pop and twangy alt-country. There’s certainly a nostalgia factor to “American Dream,” though it mostly resides in the way it begs to be blasted from a car stereo upon a reflective trip home from wherever life has taken you. “I wrote it while reflecting on those moments coming home to my hometown for holidays and seeing so many people I grew up with getting married, buying houses, and starting families while I’m living in a completely different world and timeline in LA, pursuing a creative career,” BEL adds. “It’s about fantasizing about an alternate version of myself who chose a simpler life, and reflecting on everything that can happen in a decade—the disillusionment, the unexpected turns, and the resilience it takes to keep going.”
Check out the video for “American Dream” below, and revisit the tour diary BEL shared with us back in the spring here.
