Lily Fitts, a 24-year-old Americana singer and songwriter from Topsfield, Massachusetts, is about as New England as you can get.

Fitts was born in Topsfield, raised in Cambridge, and spent her summers on the North Shore. She also recently concluded her first headlining tour around the United States, bringing her honest — sometimes boldly so — songs on the road with her.

“I was raised in a household where we were very honest with each other. We never really beat around the bush,” said Fitts. “I think that really comes through in my writing — I feel like I’m brutally honest with the way I write.”

Although Fitts has been playing guitar and singing since she was 9, she didn’t always have her sights set on the shining lights of the stage. Fitts graduated from University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2023 with her sights set on becoming a medical doctor, when she faced a crossroads.

She’d been posting song covers on social media when her perspective-shifted version of Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” went viral in 2022. Fitts’s warm vocal performances resonated, and her covers, rewritten or not, not only went viral but stayed viral. So, she had a choice to make.

“I was working in a cardiology unit after I graduated for a little bit,” she said. “But then I had to sit down with myself … Music has always been my dream, but it never felt like it was possible.”

Fitts said Noah Kahan, whom she went on to open for in London at Hyde Park earlier this year, was a great example of someone making it from New England, powered by a New Englander’s sensibilities.

“I believe everything happens for a reason. You know, nothing in life will ever be handed to you, and you just really have to go with what your heart is telling you, and what sets you on fire,” she said.

So Fitts took the leap and switched her career to music. Now, over two years later, she ended her headlining tour with a sold-out hometown show at The Sinclair, a venue which she frequently walked by and busked next to during her upbringing in Cambridge.

“I was so emotional that whole night,” she said. “I could see some of my college friends, and I could see my mom and my family standing right in the back. So it was just so incredible. I’m definitely so lucky, and I have such a good support system back at home, so that’s why it’s hard to imagine ever leaving New England.”

Following her headlining tour, she’ll be joining Max McNown on several of his European tour dates, beginning this week in Dublin.

Come 2026, Fitts said she’ll be returning to the studio, but with slightly different inspiration in mind. “Getting By,” the album Fitts released earlier this year, was based largely on Fitts’s own past experiences and relationships. Her new material will focus more on self-reflection, she said, and the way she’s changed in the time she’s plunged fully into the music industry.

Fitts’s music, much like her upbringing, is focused on authenticity. Her goal is to be as real as possible about her own experiences in hopes of bringing the feelings to the surface enough for her listeners to grab onto them.

“I write a lot of music out of places of pain and hurt and sorrow, but when I put on this show, it doesn’t feel like we’re sad. It feels like a moment where we can all just come together and heal,” she said.

Fitts, in her lyrics and in her way through the music world, is in search of truth. Whether that involves searching for her truest self in the midst of social media and in-person fanfare, or finding her most authentic lyrics to share with her listeners, or creating welcoming spaces during her live shows, Fitts is focused on what’s real.

“My goal is just to be real and just never pretend to be something I’m not. To be authentically myself – I feel like that’s just my goal,” she said.

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