Hannah Wicklund – War On Women; Calling All Good Men
Hannah Wicklund has announced the release of her fourth studio album War On Women; Calling All Good Men, out on August 28th via Strawberry Moon Records.
The album is available to pre-order now here and every album pre-order comes with an instant access digital download to Vol.1 of the The Strawberry Moon Tribune.
Regarding The Strawberry Moon Tribune, Hannah says, “I became quite disenchanted with the selfish nature of the music industry and was supremely aware that I did not want to use the plight of women to singularly further my career. In a time when good information has been weaponized, and awareness has fallen into the hands of those who seek to control and abuse, my aim in creating the Strawberry Moon Tribune is simply to share good information, support my fellow artists and friends, and to create a container for the ancient wisdom that is bubbling to the surface.”
Hannah has today also revealed the ritualistic video for the acapella album opener ‘War On Women.’
War On Women; Calling All Good Men is a monster of an album that’s both beauty and the beast. Its 13 sublime, scorching songs are at once a warning and a winner’s lap, conjured from hell and from the heart. It is Hannah’s first album since breaking free from an industry which conspired to keep her quiet.
It follows 2024’s widely-acclaimed The Prize – named Rolling Stone Brazil’s #1 Rock Album of the Year among a wealth of further praise. It should have sent the long-established, South Carolina-born singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist and visual artist, supernova. Instead, it marked a years-long battle to retain her rights.
Her response is a record that’s a call-to-arms for change. A gutsy, gripping, rollercoaster ride that ratchets up the drama, shakes with rage and basks in beauty as it shimmies through rock, soul, blues, folk, gospel and pop. It takes in a tale of heartbreak in strange circumstances, lays bare the obstacles Hannah overcame to take back control of her career, and offers hope for the future.
Written, recorded and self-produced on a barely-there budget in the latter half of last year, funded completely by her paintings and artwork, War On Women; Calling All Good Men is an antidote to lean-back listening. Raw, instinctive and fuelled by passion and a sense of right and wrong, its songs are a mix of live takes and well-built studio tracks, captured mostly by engineer Devin Vaughan in Charleston, who also plays drums on the record.
“I’ve made the South Carolina version of a Nashville record,” says Hannah, who returned home to South Carolina last summer after a decade spent in Nashville, between international arena tours with acts including Deep Purple, Yes and Greta Van Fleet. “Most of it was written on Folly Beach, where I fell back in love with music and felt like a kid again. Escaping the hustle and business culture around music was my saving grace.”
The Prize was written by the start of 2019, but it took five years to be recorded and released, eventually on Hannah’s own label Strawberry Moon Records, which became an imprint under another label that would skew the independent status she had worked so hard to maintain and create.
What happened in between is a torturous take of deception, collusion, broken promises and dodgy contracts, as men in the upper echelons of the industry tried to curtail her career.
In June last year, the morning of Friday the 13th and two days after the Strawberry Moon, Hannah started over. She split from her long-term partner days before they were due to move onto a private island together off the coast of South Carolina, just two weeks after uncovering full blown collusion and conspiracy between her attorney, manager and label, receiving a death threat from her own manager in the process.
For two months, she considered her future and whether music even played a part. Then she began writing again, and War On Women; Calling All Good Men sparked into life.
“They poured out of me,” Hannah says. “For years, I hadn’t finished one song. Every time I tried, I got depressed not knowing how or when they would reach the world. Suddenly, I re-discovered the pure joy of making music. And the more I wrote, the less angry I became. The songs were a place to park my rage.”
The stupendously sleazy ‘Evil Is A Corporation’ arrived quickly, taking only 10 minutes amidst an afternoon on the beach. “Evil is like cocaine” drawls Hannah at the start of a groovy, bluesy hip-shaker which nods to early PJ Harvey, primetime Amy Winehouse and The Cure’s Lovecats. Hannah’s sinewy, spell-casting vocals are bewitching. Ditto her grinding guitar.
Hannah’s ex takes centre stage on several songs. On the ferocious ‘Whistle To Blow’, she rails against the man who “shaved his head like Britney Spears”, days after her career uncoverings, while ‘The Token’ is a spine-tingling piano ballad which doesn’t pull its punches on the imbalance and abuse in her old relationship at the hands of him and his world. The bare strummed ‘Stockholm’ is a similarly frank depiction of a partnership that had strayed into strange territory – “I left Tennessee with the man of my dreams,” Hannah sings, “then I woke up to you”.
Hannah’s incredible guitar playing forms the backbone of War On Women; Calling All Good Men, the crowning glory displayed on ‘Cowards & Kings’ which houses what Hannah calls, “The greatest guitar solo I have ever played”. Recorded live in one take, her brave and bold track gives a glimpse into her experience in the music industry and the darkness she’s encountered.
Three of the album’s tracks hail from Hannah’s past and bring religion, the environment and women’s issues to the forefront. The funky ‘Red Gorilla’ and squally rocker ‘Marionettes’ were both written well before The Prize but continually rejected. “I thought they were two of my strongest songs, but I was told they didn’t fit,” says Hannah. “Now I have them back”.
Work started on the acapella opener ‘War On Women’ in August 2016, which sets out the album’s ambitious agenda in just under two minutes, and completed the day after she opened for Joan Jett who spoke to her soul when she told Hannah, “The men will do anything to keep a woman in rock ‘n’ roll down. They will sabotage you; they will saddle you with debt, they will call you crazy.”
“‘War On Women’ is a song that I began writing in 2016,” says Hannah. “The day I learned about the abuse so many girls suffered from at the hands of Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics, and finished eight years later, the weekend after the 2024 election when the phrase “Your Body, My Choice” was touted as a victory slogan amongst boys and men. I alchemized my rage into a song meant to be a call to action for all the good men of this world to take a stand and begin using their power and their voices to protect women and girls instead of predators; for only then can we call you our brothers and only then can we keep you as lovers…”
The song’s counterpart is the album’s acapella closing track, ‘Calling All Good Men’.“That was the last song I wrote and it arrived in a flash, driving home after a show that I played with my brother,” says Hannah. “I want it to be abundantly clear that I am not anti-men. These are not just women’s issues; they are society’s issues and finding a solution will involve all of us. It’s a hopeful song to go out on and serves as my olive branch to all the good men out there to use their power and their voices to not just create a safer world, but to make space for women and girls to truly shine.”
“The Powers that be
Will never scare me
Into the silence they’re craving
Their threats on my life
Only prove I was right
About all the secrets they’d hidden.”
HANNAH WICKLUND OCTOBER 2026 HEADLINE TOUR DATES
1st – Birmingham, Institute 2
2nd – Liverpool, O2 Academy
4th – Guildford, Boiler Room
8th – Tunbridge Wells, The Forum
9th – Arlington, Arlington Arts Centre
11th – London, The Lexington
10th – Norwich, Waterfront
14th – Farsley, Old Woollen
17th – Bury, The Met
19th – Edinburgh, Speakeasy
20th – Glasgow, Rum Shack
22nd – Grimsby, Yardbirds
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