I recently began freelancing for 650 AM WSM, radio home of the Grand Ole Opry, and was lucky enough to spend some time visiting the station’s afternoon show, Nashville Today. One of the guests on the show today was singer-songwriter Erin Enderlin and I was blown away at her lyrics and the powerful storytelling within her music. She performed the poignant “Till It’s Gone” featured on her latest album, Whiskeytown Crier, which you can hear below.
While Enderlin is an engaging solo artist, she has also penned songs for the likes of Terri Clark, Randy Travis, Alan Jackson, Lee Ann Womack, and Luke Bryan, among others. Produced by Jamey Johnson and Jim “Moose” Brown, her 2017 release embodies plenty of heartache, murder ballads and classic country songs that will stop listeners in their tracks. Well aware that she pens her fair share of sad songs, Enderlin told host Devon O’Day that writing is often therapy for her.
“I have chronic depression and I think for a long time maybe I didn’t understand how sad my songs were,” she admits. “For me, music is therapy.”
Enderlin will perform on the Grand Ole Opry for the second time on Saturday (March 10) and an afternoon show at Nashville’s 3rd and Lindsley on Tuesday (March 13). For more of her tour dates, visit her website.
Margo Price isn’t afraid to speak out about injustice and on “Pay Gap” she sings about the need for equality in the work force. She performed the song last night (March 7) on Conan, a fitting choice ahead of International Women’s Day. Backed by the all-female mariachi band Las Mariachi Lindas Mexicanas, and with “Inclusion Rider” taped across her guitar, she adequately got her point across.
“It’s not that I’m asking for more than I’m owed / And I don’t think I’m better than you / They say that we live in the land of the free / But sometimes that bell don’t ring true . . . Women do work and get treated like slaves since 1776,” she sings on “Pay Gap.”
“When I decided I was gonna put ‘Pay Gap’ on my album, I kind of knew it wouldn’t be a radio hit but really nothing I do is and I’m just trying to make good music — I’m not concerned with the mainstream perception of it,” she said in a recent interview with CBC Music. “I think down the road it will be looked at as one of those moments because it’s insane that in 2018 people still think the pay gap is a myth. It’s pretty mind-blowing.”
She adds, “I think it’s just a very slow, long burn trying to get equal rights. And we go back to the ’60s and the ’70s and we’re thinking that we’re making progress and it’s just very tedious work. Maybe after I’m dead in a hundred years they say the pay gap might be closed. I’m not holding my breath.”
A song about equality, watch Price’s performance of “Pay Gap” below.
Stephanie Quayle’s latest single, “Selfish,” has the Montana native singing of spending some quality alone time with her husband. All dolled up for a night to themselves, Quayle explains how she’s selfish when it comes to her beau.
“Sometimes I’m like, ‘Man, I just want some more time with my husband,'” she previously told me in an interview. “I was like, ‘I hate sharing him. Man, I’m being so selfish.’ Then [I thought], ‘Oh, that might be a good song idea.'”
Quayle released the music video for the song on Tuesday (March 6). Directed by Jeff Johnson (Carrie Underwood/Cole Swindell/Chris Young), the concept behind the video was to reveal a more intimate, softer side to her fans.
“This video concept is simple — think back to the white T-shirt and jeans style of GAP and Calvin Klein,” Quayle describes in a press release. “The lyrics of this song say it all so we wanted to capture their raw vulnerability on screen without having a literal visual representation.”
During an interview last year with Taste of Country, Quayle said she first moved to Nashville over seven years ago. Instantly in awe at the level of writers in Music City, she hoped to one day fit into the songwriting community. Her unique vision for “Selfish,” among other songs she penned for her latest album Love the Way You See Me, have made this dream a reality for the singer-songwriter.
“One of my greatest desires when I moved to Nashville was to earn the respect of the community. The songwriting community, the artist community, and it be real and authentic. I think what I’m starting to feel is that camaraderie from a real, honest way,” she notes.
Lindi Ortega is gearing up to release her fifth studio album, Liberty, on March 30 and in a new article featured on Lenny Letter, the singer opens up about her lifelong struggle with body-dysmorphic disorder.
Ortega is extremely honest about her often debilitating condition. She cites an experience being bullied as a teen for making her go into a spiral of self-consciousness and obsession with her appearance.
“When I was thirteen, I showed up to a party where I happened to be wearing the same top as one of the ‘pretty girls’ in my class,” she writes. “Noting this, a boy lined us up side by side and decided it would be fun to compare us. His cruel assessment of me, in front of my peers, was devastating. Up until that point, I hadn’t really had any comparison for my looks; I thought I was normal. It wasn’t until people told me I was ugly that I started to believe that I truly was.”
For years, Ortega says she struggled with her appearance. “My self-image grew so distorted that I actually convinced myself I was deformed,” she continues. Thanks to extensive therapy and support from her mother, Ortega has learned to cope with BDD.
“People often ask me where my dark, lonely songs come from. This is that place,” she concedes. Read her heartfelt post here.
Ortega proves to be a positive role model as she speaks out about the struggle one goes through with BDD and works hard to overcome her ongoing battle with BDD. Listen to her new single, fittingly titled “The Comeback Kid,” below.
Ashley Monroe is gearing up to release her fourth album, Sparrow, on April 20 and if her new single “Hands On You” is any indication, listeners are in for a memorable journey. The sultry ballad has Monroe singing of how she wishes she was with a man instead of being alone in bed while thinking about him.
In an interview with NPR Music, the singer says the song’s inspiration came from a weekend beach trip. While she was forced to stay at the hotel due to a stomach bug, her friends were out enjoying themselves and returned with stories of the handsome men they had met. (Read more of her interview about “Hands On You” and her upcoming album here).
Monroe’s newly released acoustic performance highlights the song’s lyrics while her wavering vocals are at the forefront. Accompanied by delicate guitar and violin, the acoustic version of “Hands On You” is striking. Listen below.
Monroe worked with producer Dave Cobb on the album and co-wrote each of the 12 tracks featured on Sparrow.
“I knew I wanted to work with Dave,” Monroe says in a press release. “All of his records are consistently awesome and classic, timeless, old and new all in one. Country music is a wide genre, and that’s OK. I don’t even know what genre this record is, but I know it’s me.”
Sparrow Track List:
1. “Orphan” (Ashley Monroe, Gordie Sampson, Paul Moak)
2. “Hard On A Heart” (Ashley Monroe, Blu Sanders, Paul Moak)
3. “Hands On You” (Ashley Monroe, Jon Randall)
4. “Mother’s Daughter” (Ashley Monroe, Brendan Benson, Ryan Beaver)
5. “Rita” (Ashley Monroe, Nicole Galyon, Paul Moak)
6. “Wild Love” (Ashley Monroe, Waylon Payne, Brendan Benson)
7. “This Heaven” (Anderson East, Ashley Monroe, Aaron Raitiere)
8. “I’m Trying To” (Ashley Monroe, Kassi Ashton, Jon Randall)
9. “She Wakes Me Up (Rescue Me)” (Ashley Monroe, Waylon Payne, Paul Moak)
10. “Paying Attention” (Ashley Monroe, Waylon Payne, Brendan Benson)
11. “Daddy I Told You” (Ashley Monroe, Angaleena Presley, Josh O’Keefe)
12. “Keys To The Kingdom” (Ashley Monroe, Waylon Payne)
Lori McKenna is well known for penning some of country music’s most memorable songs including Tim McGraw’s “Humble & Kind” and Little Big Town’s “Girl Crush.” The Massachusetts-based songwriter is also a solo artist and during a discussion on Saturday (March 3) at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, McKenna announced that her Dave Cobb-produced 11th studio album will be released in July. Titled The Tree, it will feature songs about family including one about her dad called “People Get Old.”
“The goal is to write a great song and to write the best song we can write that day,” she told the audience at the CMHOF. “Sometimes a song will lead you to where it wants to go . . . the best way to write a song is to not worry about what anyone else thinks.”
I chatted with McKenna ahead of the release of her tenth studio album, The Bird & the Rifle, where she discussed writing her first song at the age of 12 and the story behind “Humble & Kind.”
McKenna says that “Humble & Kind” is fairly simple and the list of hopes and dreams for her children featured throughout the song was easy to write being a parent. While she always starts with verses when it comes to songwriting, McKenna said for “Humble & Kind” the chorus came first.
“I knew that I lucked out in finding that chorus, to be honest, and then everything else was easy to put in there,” she explains. “It was just a matter of editing it down and putting it all in the order that worked in my head the right way.”
“I had the title and I knew I wanted it to be things I wanted my kids to know,” she says, explaining her process. “Once you get there, there’s a lot of information. You could overshoot the song. It was more about editing and taking out ‘put the toilet seat down.’ That didn’t necessarily have to be in it.”
Carly Pearce is making a name for herself in the country genre as a powerful songwriter and artist. Her debut single, “Every Little Thing,” became her first No. 1 last year, making Pearce the only solo female with a charting country debut single certified Gold in 2017 and the highest charting solo female debut since July 2015. The song’s success had Pearce in a distinguished class as she joined Carrie Underwood and Kelsea Ballerini as one of only three women to achieve this feat in the past 12 years.
I chatted with Pearce for a cover story for Sounds Like Nashville and the recent ACM nominated New Female Vocal Artist of the Year says that she hopes to be remembered as a female who helped mold this era of country music. Meanwhile, “Every Little Thing” is breaking the mold for women on country radio and she admits the song’s success still amazes her.
“Never in a million years did I think that song would have broke the records and done what it’s done,” she marvels. “In Nashville, it’s hard enough to break through as a female artist in general, but then with a heartbreak ballad as your debut. That’s kind of the kiss of death. To see what it’s done and maybe start to be one of the females in that line of girls that help to change the mold for new females is really, really exciting, and truly is all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’ve dreamt of singing country music on a mass level since I was a little girl.”
Pearce’s new single, “Hide the Wine,” shows a different side to the singer. An upbeat track, she admits she’s excited to be happy on country radio. Listen to her new single below and catch her on tour this year with Blake Shelton, Thomas Rhett and Rascal Flatts.
Kacey Musgraves is well known for pushing the boundaries of country music with songs like her Grammy Award winning “Merry Go Round” and CMA Award winning “Follow Your Arrow.” Now, the singer is back with two new songs off her upcoming fourth studio album, Golden Hour, due out March 30.
Released last week, “Space Cowboy” immediately strikes a chord with its imagery and Musgraves’ whispered vocals. “Sunsets fade and love does too / Yeah, we had our day in the sun / When a horse wants to run ain’t no sense in closing the gate / So you can have your space, cowboy,” she sings on the chorus.
She shared on Instagram earlier this week that the song was inspired by seeing a stallion charging powerfully from one end of the arena to the other.
“Though I was ‘safe’ on the other side of the arena wall, it kinda scared me when he came flying toward me..barely stopping in time,” she writes. “My riding teacher saw him coming at me and yelled at me to move away. I said ‘I’m fine! The gate is closed!’ to which she said, ‘Girl – when they wanna go they will go…there ain’t no point in even shuttin’ the gate.’ It really made a mark on me when she said that and I wrote it down. SPACE COWBOY came a couple days after with @shanemcanally + @lukerobert ✨Make peace with what doesn’t belong. You’ll find something better.”
Listen to her two new songs, “Space Cowboy” and “Butterflies,” below.
March is Women’s History Month and after venting with several friends about the lack of females on country radio and brainstorming ways to highlight the unique and empowering women that make up the genre, I decided for 31 days to showcase female artists on You Sing, I Write.
Truthfully, this idea was sparked by Cam and her previous post on Twitter about the twisted reasoning some radio executives have on why they don’t play women on radio.
The majority of country listeners are female (actually true) but apparently we prefer listening male singers so we can “dream about them being [our] boyfriend” (actually said to me). Sure hope #iHeartAwards picks the hottest one, cause that’s all my lady-brain can understand! https://t.co/gWx09SlQJI
Her response was to the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Awards nominee list, which includes 10 male nominees and only one female. Lauren Alaina is the sole woman nominated at the awards show for Best New Country Artist.
While I’m a huge fan of the genre, it only hurts females by not showcasing other talented women. Artists like Cam speak out and in turn create change. Also, her music is unlike anything heard on today’s country radio (in the best way). Her new single, “Diane,” is a heartfelt response to Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” The song tells the heartbreaking tale of a woman who learns the guy she’s been dating is married.
“It’s the apology so many spouses deserve, but never get,” Cam says of the song. “The other woman is coming forward to break the news to the wife about an affair, respecting her enough to have that hard conversation, once she realized he was married. And in true country fashion, I’ve set the whole raw story to upbeat music, so you can dance while you process it all.”
Watch the video for “Diane” below and stay tuned for a month of features and interviews with some of my favorite females in country music.
Songwriting Session is a column that goes behind-the-scenes with artists and songwriters. Each Sunday, a new songwriter will share their journey and provide lessons they’ve learned along the way. This week, Nicolle Galyon shares what she has learned as a songwriter.
There’s a very good chance when you turn on the radio one of Nicolle Galyon’s songs will be playing. Ten years since signing her first publishing deal, the songwriter currently has five singles at country radio including Kenny Chesney’s “All the Pretty Girls,” Lady Antebellum’s “Heart Break,” RaeLynn’s “Lonely Call,” Florida Georgia Line’s “Smooth” and Lee Brice’s “Boy.”
The Kansas native’s songwriting journey is more than a decade in the making as she moved to Nashville in 2002 with the plan to pursue a career in artist management. During her time as a student at Belmont she worked as a personal assistant for Greg Oswald at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment (WME) where she was frequently surrounded by music and industry professionals. She recalls being mesmerized while attending guitar pulls her first year in Music City and it’s there that she was first hit with the songwriting bug.
“I was like, ‘Wait, this is a job? You can do this? I think this is actually what I should be doing,’” Galyon says over the phone.
Galyon grew up around music and played classical piano. Her real passion was country music though and somewhere between classes and acting as a personal assistant, songwriting spread like wildfire in her heart and overtook all the things she previously thought she’d pursue. By the time she graduated from Belmont her dream of a career as an artist manager changed to becoming a songwriter. She took all the lessons from working for a booking agent with her and admits that one of the most important things she learned was to have thick skin.
“It really taught me to not take anything personally and to have a thick skin and to see behind the curtain of how deals get done and how business really goes down,” she explains of her time shadowing Oswald. “That perspective has really helped me, even as a songwriter, when something doesn’t go my way or my song isn’t a single or my song doesn’t make a record. That job gave me the 30,000-foot perspective to realize it’s not all about you and it’s not about the song. There’s a lot of moving parts here that has to go right in order for something to happen.”
Her time as Oswald’s assistant frequently had her in the presence of other songwriters, publishers and producers. Galyon vividly remembers parties where she’d be cleaning up and someone would ask her to play them a song she wrote. She says it was in these moments that she earned her stripes in bravery and thanks to Paul Worley, one of the people in the room that heard her songs, she was introduced to BJ Hill from Warner/Chappell Nashville where she signed in 2007.
“I met so many people through that job,” Galyon reflects. “I say I got my degree from Belmont, but my education from working for Greg Oswald.”
In 2013, Galyon saw her first taste of success when Keith Urban recorded “We Were Us,” a song she co-wrote with longtime collaborators Jimmy Robbins and Jon Nite. Galyon recalls writing the No. 1 song shortly after she came back from her 10-year high school reunion. Robbins and Nite had written with Thomas Rhett earlier that day and played her an idea that they didn’t wind up using. She says they had the beginning of the song’s chorus, “Back when that song was a song I could sing along.”
“They had the top of the chorus written, but they didn’t know what the title would be. There was really no idea yet. Because I had just come back from my hometown, this little rural farm town in Kansas, all of this small town imagery started coming out of my mouth. Then I started singing some of the verses,” she recalls. “I was really nostalgic thinking about my whole class because I had just seen all my classmates. We’re all married and some are pregnant and have kids and I’m just looking at us going, ‘Man, that’s when we were us. Now we’ll never be us again, me and my class. You can never go back to that time.’”
