“Can you make folks feel what you feel inside?
‘Cause if you’re big star bound let me warn you it’s a long hard ride”
– Gary Gentry, J.B. Detterline “The Ride”.
It’s not every day that you hear about an artist being signed to a major record label at the age of 36 years old, especially in the modern country music landscape. It’s also not every day that you hear that artist is nominated for 2 Grammy Awards for Best Country Song and Best Country Solo Performance, with her first major-label release. However, not every artist is Ashley McBryde. Combining the classic country sounds and instrumentation of 90s country music, with honest, heartfelt vocal performances, McBryde is distinguishing herself from the pack and carving out her own place in modern country music.
The trend of artists taking away the multi-layered guitar tracks and overdubs for a more organic, rootsier sound has led to a deeper focus on what makes us human, and what makes us feel the way we feel. Songs like ‘Someone Like You’, by Adele, ‘Rainbow’, by Kacey Musgraves, and ‘Someone You Loved’, by Lewis Capaldi, have been challenging artists to bring a sense of vulnerability to their music and put out into the world that vulnerability and honesty isn’t weakness, it’s strength. This is exactly what McBryde does in her song, ‘Girl Goin’ Nowhere’.
Stream or Download McBryde’s song ‘Girl Goin’ Nowhere’ here.
“Don’t waste your life behind that guitar
You may get gone, but you won’t get far”– Ashley McBryde, Jeremy Bussey ‘Girl Goin’ Nowhere’.
The song starts off with these lyrics, words that many aspiring musicians and dreamers can relate to hearing. The first verse is painful, and at first, rubbed me the wrong way. Why would someone choose the first song on her first major release to dive into a full 2 verses outlining all this fear and negativity? Then the chorus comes in and the true beauty of what Bussey and McBryde have written comes to life.
“But when the lights come up
And I hear the band
And where they said I’d never be is exactly where I am
I hear the crowd
I look around
And I can’t find an empty chair
Not bad for a girl goin’ nowhere”– Ashley McBryde, Jeremy Bussey ‘Girl Goin’ Nowhere’.
McBryde based this song off of comments made to her by her High school Algebra teacher who was telling McBryde that her chances of making it, following her dreams, were slim to none. Instead of buckling, instead of breaking, she used those words as the fuel to keep fighting for her dreams. McBryde is an excellent example of what happens when you believe in your dreams and wake up every day making them a reality. In this way, this is the perfect first song for her first major, award-winning record.
Listening to McBryde’s emotional, quiet vocal delivery and solo acoustic guitar off the top of the song made me feel as if I was a fly on the wall watching her recall, to herself, the journey she’s taken to get where she is now. An electric guitar adds that eerie, flashback kind of vibe as it marks the chords in the first verse and chorus. This is an amazing example of how that stripped back instrumentation really lets the emotional life of the song draw you in as a listener.
Once you move from the first chorus to the second, and from the start of her journey to her first song being on the radio, the instrumentation starts to change adding in more prominent electric guitar and organ off the top of Chorus 2. I’m not sure if this was intentional, I would like to think it was, but the bass and drums join the mix of instruments when McBryde sings, “I hear the band” in Chorus 2. The instruments stay in throughout the rest of the song, but never overpower the quiet reflective quality of the song. It’s not triumphant, not anthemic, it’s more of a calm confidence and appreciation not for where she is at that moment, but for all the things that brought her where she dreamed of being.
“I need to thank my daddy
For that first set of strings
And all those folks who swore I’d never be anything
It took a whole lot of yes I wills and I don’t care
A whole lot of basement dives and county fairs”– Ashley McBryde, Jeremy Bussey ‘Girl Goin’ Nowhere’.
Ashley McBryde can be found online on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and her official website.
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