Twenty years ago, Whalen, who grew up in Denver, packed a camper, set up shows at Borders bookstores across the country and started touring. By 2010, she felt she was on the verge of making it as a musician — but that's when Billy Raymond Counterman started stalking her through Facebook. He sent Whalen thousands of unwanted messages, including invitations for coffee, threats to kill himself, and details about her personal life that made her think he was following her.
"If I could go back to where I was before all of this started, I would do it," she says. "I had worked so hard. I thought my career was really on the rise. I was opening for some big names, and I was getting a lot of attention. I had a record deal out of Nashville. I really thought it might be a big launching point for my career, but that's not what happened."
Instead, for the next six years, Counterman messaged Whalen, creating fake accounts when she blocked him.
After releasing her album Come back, Come back in 2013, Whalen stopped recording music and only performed live "infrequently," she says. "I had a really hard time being on stage in dark places. I just had never experienced stage fright in all my years of performing, but at that point, I was having some panic attacks and just really uncomfortable anxiety."
In 2017, Counterman was finally arrested, convicted of stalking by an Arapahoe County jury, and sentenced to more than four years in prison.
After Counterman completed his sentence in 2020, he appealed his conviction. After the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the verdict, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the case. The question was whether all the creepy messages and sick remarks constituted true threats, or if they were protected as free speech.
On June 27, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Counterman. The case was remanded and sent back to the Colorado Court of Appeals.
Whalen was already working on "Stronger" before the decision came down. The song came together as she thought about what she'd want to tell the Supreme Court justices.
"I had a crossroads in front of me where I could have sort of faded away from the case and my voice be unheard, or come forward and really try to add my voice," Whalen recalls. "In going through that soul search to decide whether I wanted to be part of it, I started to write."
"Stronger," which will be released September 28, marks the first time Whalen had been in a studio recording booth in ten years. On what she calls her "redemption song," she tried to "evoke the emotions of the trauma that I've been through and the length of time that the toll was upon me."
While she usually records with a guitar, Whalen decided to play the piano for "Stronger" because "I felt it was a better match for the content," she says. "It's more of a powerful song than a sad song."
In one of the refrains, Whalen sings that that she's coming back "a little stronger than I did before" and that " I came back in spite of you. I'm not hiding anymore. I'm singing at last, a little stronger."
While she usually records with a guitar, Whalen decided to play the piano for "Stronger" because "I felt it was a better match for the content," she says. "It's more of a powerful song than a sad song."
In one of the refrains, Whalen sings that that she's coming back "a little stronger than I did before" and that " I came back in spite of you. I'm not hiding anymore. I'm singing at last, a little stronger."
She's not yet sure yet whether she's going to fully reemerge as a musician. She says she wants to "feel it out" after the release of this song.
"People haven't heard from me in a long time, and I think when they don't hear from you, they forget to look for you," she says. "It kind of feels like reintroducing myself."
Even though her family is still in Denver, Whalen moved out of her hometown a couple of years ago and keeps her location a secret because she's still hiding from Counterman.
"It's probably one of the major impediments to me touring again," she notes. "You have to post exactly where you'll be and exactly what time. I just haven't really been able to comfortably do that, but I'm feeling better and better about it."
She last performed in Denver in 2018, and leaving the city to escape Counterman "was extremely hard," she says. "I would like to come back. I particularly would like to be able to perform there again."
She last performed in Denver in 2018, and leaving the city to escape Counterman "was extremely hard," she says. "I would like to come back. I particularly would like to be able to perform there again."
