Latest / Takin’ A Walk Nashville / Takin’ A Walk Nashville with Tenille Arts: Her Rise in Country Music and the Power of Female Storytelling
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Taking a Walk Nashville.
- 0:02Speaker 2: Hi, this is Sarah Harrelson, your host of Taken Walk Nashville.
- 0:06Speaker 2: Born and raised in a small prairie town in Canada,
- 0:10Speaker 2: to Neil Arts picked up the guitar and pinned her
- 0:12Speaker 2: first song at age thirteen and has been performing NonStop
- 0:16Speaker 2: ever since. She has racked up nearly a billion streams,
- 0:20Speaker 2: garnered over seven hundred and fifty thousand digital followers, and
- 0:25Speaker 2: her critically acclaimed Love, Heartbreak and Everything in Between album
- 0:30Speaker 2: yielded her first number one single, Somebody Like That, which
- 0:33Speaker 2: has certified double platinum. This single made history as the
- 0:38Speaker 2: first number one country song written, produced, and performed by
- 0:42Speaker 2: all females, and was the first country song by a
- 0:46Speaker 2: Canadian artist to reach number one in the US since
- 0:50Speaker 2: two thousand and seven. Her twenty twenty four fourteen song
- 0:54Speaker 2: To Be Honest album leads with the stunning singles So
- 0:57Speaker 2: Do I, written by Demi Lovado, Sasha Loan, Laura Velts,
- 1:01Speaker 2: and King Henry. In twenty twenty two, Tanil was nominated
- 1:05Speaker 2: by the ACM Awards for New Female Artist of the Year,
- 1:09Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio Music Awards for Best New Country Artist, and
- 1:13Speaker 2: CMT Music Awards for Female video and breakthrough video of
- 1:17Speaker 2: the Year. Join me in our conversation today with Taneil
- 1:22Speaker 2: Arts as we talk about her new single If Somebody
- 1:26Speaker 2: Told Me You Were Dying.
- 1:31Speaker 1: Welcome to Taking a Walk Nashville with your hosts, singer
- 1:35Speaker 1: songwriter Sarah.
- 1:36Speaker 2: Harrelson, tan Neil Arts. Thank you so much for being
- 1:39Speaker 2: on Taking a Walk Nashville today.
- 1:41Speaker 1: How are you doing, I'm good. How are you I'm good?
- 1:44Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here.
- 1:46Speaker 2: So I'm really excited for your upcoming single that's about
- 1:49Speaker 2: to drop, If Somebody Told Me You Were Dying drops
- 1:53Speaker 2: April tenth.
- 1:55Speaker 1: You state that this song came.
- 1:57Speaker 2: From a late night conversation when you realized you hadn't
- 2:01Speaker 2: seen your X in a while, which can be very
- 2:04Speaker 2: relatable because you know, many of us carry anger and
- 2:08Speaker 2: feelings after a relationship, especially if it didn't end well.
- 2:12Speaker 2: And you say that this song kind of sets you
- 2:16Speaker 2: at peace by hopefully never seeing them again. So were
- 2:20Speaker 2: you kind of in this mindset while writing this song, like.
- 2:24Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm okay if I don't, you.
- 2:26Speaker 2: Know, attend their funeral hypothetically speaking or see them again?
- 2:30Speaker 1: What was your mindset while writing this?
- 2:33Speaker 3: I feel like it was a bit of a wave
- 2:35Speaker 3: of emotions because like it's always kind of that like
- 2:39Speaker 3: jump scare feeling when you're like, well, what is like
- 2:41Speaker 3: when somebody asked me, because that's what happened. Somebody asked
- 2:44Speaker 3: me like, oh, have you seen them? And I was
- 2:45Speaker 3: like no, And I didn't know what they were getting
- 2:49Speaker 3: at by saying that either, you know, so then your
- 2:52Speaker 3: mind kind of goes to, Okay, what does that mean?
- 2:55Speaker 3: And like what are they going to tell me or whatever?
- 2:56Speaker 3: And so honestly, I just like had really thought about
- 3:01Speaker 3: it in a while, and then that weird thought popped
- 3:05Speaker 3: into my head of like if somebody told me that,
- 3:08Speaker 3: like if that was what their follow up text was,
- 3:11Speaker 3: like oh, you know, something has happened, Like I I
- 3:16Speaker 3: really for a second thought like, oh my gosh, Like
- 3:19Speaker 3: I wouldn't even I don't think I would even go
- 3:22Speaker 3: to the funeral. Like if something, if somebody told me
- 3:24Speaker 3: something awful, like I wouldn't even put myself in that situation.
- 3:28Speaker 3: I wouldn't even put myself back in there because it
- 3:31Speaker 3: was so detrimental to my mental health and my health
- 3:35Speaker 3: as a human being that like no, I really wouldn't
- 3:39Speaker 3: I wouldn't even want to be in the in that
- 3:42Speaker 3: same room. So it was a thought that I thought
- 3:45Speaker 3: was maybe a little out there, but I wrote it
- 3:47Speaker 3: down anyway, and I ended up having a writing session
- 3:51Speaker 3: with Lydia Sutherland and Joe Townge and she actually Lydia
- 3:56Speaker 3: had actually like started talking about this other idea of
- 3:59Speaker 3: like something else about dying, and I was like, well,
- 4:02Speaker 3: I have this other idea, and so we ended up
- 4:07Speaker 3: running with with my idea of if somebody told me
- 4:09Speaker 3: you were dying.
- 4:11Speaker 2: And you know, it's such a weird realization to think
- 4:14Speaker 2: about that, but so relatable because you know, if you've
- 4:17Speaker 2: gotten over someone, you've had your closure, then you don't
- 4:21Speaker 2: want to go back to them, no matter what the circumstances.
- 4:24Speaker 2: So I think it's very relatable. I love the production
- 4:28Speaker 2: of the song. Who did you work with in the
- 4:30Speaker 2: studio for this song?
- 4:32Speaker 3: Todd Tren and Joe townsh did it together, which was
- 4:36Speaker 3: really cool because Joe had started a demo the day
- 4:40Speaker 3: of and I just loved like everything that he was doing,
- 4:44Speaker 3: and I had put down my vocals that day as well,
- 4:48Speaker 3: and like the day that we wrote the song, we
- 4:51Speaker 3: did a little demo and I ended up keeping like
- 4:55Speaker 3: pretty much all of my day of vocals, and so
- 4:59Speaker 3: we brought Todd in and he stacked, like helped me
- 5:03Speaker 3: stack a bunch of harmonies, and he was just really
- 5:05Speaker 3: great at putting this whole thing together. So yeah, it
- 5:09Speaker 3: came out very cinematic and dramatic, which was kind of
- 5:12Speaker 3: what I was going for.
- 5:14Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely fits the mood everyone should go check
- 5:17Speaker 2: out if somebody told me you were dying. And speaking
- 5:20Speaker 2: of other singles, your single somebody like that. It became
- 5:25Speaker 2: the first number one country song written, produced, and performed
- 5:29Speaker 2: by all females, which I love. How do you feel
- 5:32Speaker 2: about carrying that torch and what are your general thoughts
- 5:36Speaker 2: on women in country music trying to make it up
- 5:40Speaker 2: the charts together? And what was it like working with
- 5:43Speaker 2: Alex Klein on the song?
- 5:45Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
- 5:46Speaker 3: Well, first of all, it was so so cool to
- 5:49Speaker 3: have that huge win with an all female team of
- 5:54Speaker 3: us all writing it together and Alex producing. That was
- 5:57Speaker 3: just really special in something that we didn't we had
- 6:00Speaker 3: kind of assumed had already happened to be totally honest, like,
- 6:04Speaker 3: we knew that there weren't many females that had topped
- 6:07Speaker 3: the charts like recently, but I'd just assumed that, like,
- 6:11Speaker 3: you know, a female producer had done that before. And
- 6:15Speaker 3: when we found out, I think we were like top
- 6:17Speaker 3: twenty and that was actually when like the record was
- 6:19Speaker 3: broken or something like that, and so it was just
- 6:22Speaker 3: really wild to find out that, you know, we made
- 6:25Speaker 3: history with that. But it was really special and obviously
- 6:29Speaker 3: I'd love to pass that on to the next all
- 6:33Speaker 3: female team for sure. And yeah, Alex was just incredible.
- 6:38Speaker 3: I mean, I still love working with her. I'm actually
- 6:40Speaker 3: going to write with her this afternoon. We just love
- 6:43Speaker 3: working together and she's a huge part of my sound
- 6:46Speaker 3: and how my music has evolved over the years.
- 6:50Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think a lot of people don't realize.
- 6:53Speaker 2: I think, you know, some listeners realize that many of
- 6:56Speaker 2: these songs are written by you know, maybe an all
- 6:59Speaker 2: female team, but not necessarily a female producer, which can
- 7:03Speaker 2: be a rarity and country music at least. So I
- 7:07Speaker 2: love that you had an all female team for this,
- 7:09Speaker 2: and I think, if I'm correct, it was the first
- 7:12Speaker 2: song since two thousand and seven that became a number
- 7:16Speaker 2: one for a Canadian female artist, correct.
- 7:19Speaker 3: Yeah, which, yeah, that was pretty reviled too. I actually
- 7:22Speaker 3: got to hang out with it was Terry Clark. She
- 7:24Speaker 3: was the last one to have a number one down
- 7:28Speaker 3: here until me, which was so weird, but I was yeah,
- 7:33Speaker 3: just she was so sweet. She invited Alex and I
- 7:36Speaker 3: over to her place and we all hung out and
- 7:38Speaker 3: she was like, well, you dethroned me. We had some champagne,
- 7:44Speaker 3: but to celebrate just the success, because yeah, Alex and
- 7:49Speaker 3: Terry also worked together on some other things, so it
- 7:51Speaker 3: was very cool.
- 7:52Speaker 1: Cool, what a special moment. Yeah, So tell us about
- 7:56Speaker 1: what was the start.
- 7:57Speaker 2: Of your career, like making that transition from Canada down
- 8:01Speaker 2: to Nashville to pursue country music.
- 8:04Speaker 3: Oh wow, I mean it started so young for me.
- 8:09Speaker 3: You know, I loved country music growing up. I loved
- 8:11Speaker 3: all kind kinds of music though, like I really was
- 8:14Speaker 3: into like all pop music and everything like that. But
- 8:18Speaker 3: when I found out that people were really writing the
- 8:21Speaker 3: songs here in Nashville, that was something that piqued my interest.
- 8:24Speaker 3: Around the time I was like thirteen fourteen years old
- 8:27Speaker 3: and started actually writing my own songs. You know, I
- 8:31Speaker 3: had always made stuff up, but I never actually wrote
- 8:34Speaker 3: it down, and so I got really interested in that.
- 8:37Speaker 3: And when I found out that, you know, some of
- 8:39Speaker 3: these major artists from Canada like Shnaia Twain, you know
- 8:44Speaker 3: they yes, they were from Canada and they started up there,
- 8:48Speaker 3: but majority of their career was started down here in
- 8:51Speaker 3: the United States. That's kind of what I was looking at.
- 8:55Speaker 3: I was like, you know, I really want to be
- 8:57Speaker 3: everywhere that I can be, and if I can be
- 8:59Speaker 3: in Nashville, really feel like I'm going to be.
- 9:01Speaker 1: Able to just grow.
- 9:03Speaker 3: And you know, I also had a big fear of
- 9:05Speaker 3: just being like, you know, maybe maybe good in a
- 9:09Speaker 3: small town, but maybe not anywhere else. And so I
- 9:12Speaker 3: really wanted to kind of push myself and get to Nashville.
- 9:16Speaker 3: So I think I was fifteen when I made my
- 9:19Speaker 3: first trip here, and yeah, I was actually like found
- 9:23Speaker 3: on my YouTube channel by a manager and he called
- 9:28Speaker 3: my parents and that's how I ended up, you know,
- 9:31Speaker 3: coming to Nashville for the first time and co writing
- 9:34Speaker 3: for the first time.
- 9:35Speaker 2: Oh wow, did you move down here with your family
- 9:38Speaker 2: or were you kind of separated from your family making
- 9:41Speaker 2: the trips.
- 9:42Speaker 3: Yeah. I was kind of making like two week trips
- 9:45Speaker 3: as often as I could with my mom, just my
- 9:49Speaker 3: mom coming with me because I have three other siblings,
- 9:51Speaker 3: so I wasn't about to uproot their lives for my
- 9:55Speaker 3: crazy dreams. But yeah, so it was a lot of
- 10:00Speaker 3: back and forth until I turned twenty one. I ended
- 10:03Speaker 3: up signing a publishing deal, and you know, if you're
- 10:06Speaker 3: from Canada, you gotta get visa and do all of
- 10:08Speaker 3: that stuff. So that was a whole process to actually
- 10:12Speaker 3: be able to get down to Nashville.
- 10:15Speaker 1: Yeah. Do you still go back to Canada A lot?
- 10:18Speaker 1: I do?
- 10:18Speaker 3: Yeah. Actually, I was talking to my grandma this morning.
- 10:20Speaker 3: She was like, when are you coming back? We mee
- 10:24Speaker 3: you here, and I'm like, oh, I try to make
- 10:26Speaker 3: it back at least twice a year. I usually come
- 10:29Speaker 3: home at some point during the summer, Labor Day weekend
- 10:32Speaker 3: kind of thing, and then Christmas. But if I ever
- 10:35Speaker 3: have shows like close by, I'm always like, okay, we
- 10:38Speaker 3: need to at least make a stop.
- 10:40Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 10:41Speaker 2: It are so many different country music festivals in Canada,
- 10:44Speaker 2: so I'm sure you're up there for gigs a lot.
- 10:47Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
- 10:49Speaker 2: Well, speaking of some of your other music, you also
- 10:52Speaker 2: recently released the song Don't Ruin Flowers. As you work
- 10:57Speaker 2: on recording your next album, what does the next chapter
- 11:01Speaker 2: look like for you with a new album.
- 11:04Speaker 3: Well, I have been writing for it for quite a while,
- 11:07Speaker 3: and I feel like the songs have been evolving and
- 11:11Speaker 3: changing throughout this entire process, so it's been kind of
- 11:14Speaker 3: interesting to nail down exactly what this project is going
- 11:19Speaker 3: to be. But it has definitely taken the path of
- 11:23Speaker 3: like just kind of exploring but also going back to
- 11:27Speaker 3: my roots quite a bit with just how I'm approaching
- 11:30Speaker 3: songwriting and everything like that. So this will be a
- 11:34Speaker 3: lot more of songs like Don't Room Flowers and if
- 11:38Speaker 3: Somebody told Me You Were Dying, and then there was
- 11:40Speaker 3: a previous song called Unbecoming, and so it's all of
- 11:43Speaker 3: those different things all in one, and as I kind
- 11:47Speaker 3: of transition from breakup songs into kind of where I
- 11:51Speaker 3: am in my life now, as you can see, there's
- 11:54Speaker 3: a smile on my face, so I'm obviously not the
- 11:57Speaker 3: breakup phase anymore, and I'm just writing a lot of
- 12:01Speaker 3: happy stuff right now. So it's fun to kind of
- 12:05Speaker 3: eventually put this together all into an album and people
- 12:08Speaker 3: will be able to see exactly what I lived through.
- 12:11Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I can't wait to hear it.
- 12:12Speaker 2: And what I've already heard, there's definitely a lot of
- 12:15Speaker 2: reflection going on, and I think it's very beautiful and relatable.
- 12:19Speaker 2: And I love the music video for Don't Ruin Flowers.
- 12:22Speaker 2: You have like all sorts of flowers, and the video
- 12:26Speaker 2: looks like you were in like a garden for most
- 12:29Speaker 2: of it.
- 12:30Speaker 3: Yeah, someone that is literally somebody's house. Somebody had a
- 12:34Speaker 3: beautiful greenhouse out in their front yard and so we
- 12:40Speaker 3: filmed the majority of it there. And yeah, I was
- 12:46Speaker 3: so cut up from the roast thorns and stuff like
- 12:48Speaker 3: that after video because I was trying to walk through
- 12:51Speaker 3: and be all whimsical and meanwhile I'm getting all scraped up.
- 12:54Speaker 3: But yeah, it was a beautiful place to shoot and
- 12:56Speaker 3: I think it just kind of brought that love of
- 12:59Speaker 3: flowers really to life.
- 13:01Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a moment.
- 13:03Speaker 2: Even though you said you were getting cut up by thorns,
- 13:05Speaker 2: there was a really cool moment in the video where
- 13:08Speaker 2: this butterfly lands on your finger. I was like, Oh,
- 13:11Speaker 2: that's so perfect that that happened.
- 13:14Speaker 3: That was wild. I was like, I just tried to
- 13:17Speaker 3: stay focused and I was like, I hope the cameras
- 13:19Speaker 3: are rolling.
- 13:19Speaker 1: I just kept going with it.
- 13:21Speaker 3: I was like, there's no way to recreate.
- 13:22Speaker 2: That, right, Yeah, such a perfect moment. So Tiniel, I
- 13:27Speaker 2: remember like back when I would actually watch The Bachelor.
- 13:31Speaker 2: You were asked, you know, three times to perform on
- 13:34Speaker 2: the TV show The Bachelor. Do you think when you
- 13:37Speaker 2: were asked to perform on it, do you think Bachelor
- 13:41Speaker 2: Nation just kind of resonated with your music?
- 13:45Speaker 3: I honestly think so, which was really interesting to me
- 13:49Speaker 3: because even in one of the episodes, I played a
- 13:52Speaker 3: song called I Hate This, which is we had filmed
- 13:55Speaker 3: a love song and that song because it was my
- 13:58Speaker 3: next song that was coming out, and it was so
- 14:01Speaker 3: interesting to see, you know, during an episode where these
- 14:06Speaker 3: people are supposed to be falling in love, they play
- 14:08Speaker 3: this breakup song and Bachelor Nation just attaches themselves to this,
- 14:13Speaker 3: and I was like, I think it was just a
- 14:15Speaker 3: good look at you know how people watching a TV
- 14:19Speaker 3: show like that, like we're all hopeless romantics, you know,
- 14:22Speaker 3: we just want that to work, and when it doesn't,
- 14:25Speaker 3: you know, we're really heartbroken. And so that I think
- 14:28Speaker 3: that's why the song I Hate This really took off
- 14:30Speaker 3: and it's still one of my best streaming songs. So
- 14:33Speaker 3: I think they they've continued to love my slow, sad songs.
- 14:38Speaker 1: Yeah, how did that work out?
- 14:40Speaker 2: Did you just get like a call like last minute
- 14:43Speaker 2: or did you know like pretty advance ahead of time
- 14:47Speaker 2: that you were going to be on it?
- 14:48Speaker 3: Well, I knew that I had kind of made like
- 14:52Speaker 3: a list of dream things that I had wanted to do,
- 14:55Speaker 3: so I knew that my team was kind of like
- 14:57Speaker 3: working on some of those angles and things like that,
- 15:00Speaker 3: and so they happened to have a contact and reached
- 15:04Speaker 3: out to see if there was an opportunity for me,
- 15:06Speaker 3: and they heard the music, and yeah, I ended up
- 15:10Speaker 3: on the show. So it was just a very cool
- 15:13Speaker 3: way of everything coming together. And then of course you
- 15:16Speaker 3: film and then it doesn't come out for months, so
- 15:20Speaker 3: it was a very hard secret key, right. Yeah.
- 15:25Speaker 2: Well, in addition to TV performances, you just recently toured
- 15:29Speaker 2: with Luke Bryan and Walker Hayes. Can we look forward
- 15:33Speaker 2: to more shows from you this year?
- 15:36Speaker 3: Yes? I hope so. I mean we're kind of working
- 15:39Speaker 3: on some stuff right now, so everybody will have to
- 15:41Speaker 3: stay tuned, but yes, I hope so, because I really
- 15:44Speaker 3: love getting to perform these songs live and getting to
- 15:48Speaker 3: have the real connection. You know, so much of my
- 15:53Speaker 3: you know, my song going number one and everything was
- 15:56Speaker 3: during a time where we couldn't all be together in
- 15:58Speaker 3: the same room, so you know, so I just you know,
- 16:01Speaker 3: dying for those opportunities to be in front of people
- 16:04Speaker 3: in real life. So hopefully that'll happen soon.
- 16:07Speaker 2: Yeah, we will stay tuned for that and your upcoming single,
- 16:10Speaker 2: upcoming album to Neil, My last question for you today
- 16:14Speaker 2: something I always ask my guest. We are on taking
- 16:17Speaker 2: a walk in Nashville. So if you could take a
- 16:20Speaker 2: walk with anyone in Nashville, where would you take that
- 16:24Speaker 2: walk and who would you take that walk with?
- 16:27Speaker 3: Wait? Are they alive or are they dead?
- 16:28Speaker 2: It it doesn't matter, they could be either orse so
- 16:32Speaker 2: people have said alive or dead people.
- 16:34Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I don't really know. I would probably
- 16:38Speaker 3: say someone like Patsy Kline. I would probably want to
- 16:44Speaker 3: take a walk with her. And because I'm fascinated by
- 16:48Speaker 3: how secretive some people's lives were back then versus how
- 16:54Speaker 3: they are now, I would love to ask some questions
- 16:57Speaker 3: about like just being a female singer back then.
- 17:02Speaker 1: Yeah, get all the tea from Patsy.
- 17:05Speaker 3: Yep, they'd love it.
- 17:07Speaker 1: Do you know where in Nashville you would take that walk?
- 17:10Speaker 3: Oh? I don't know. I mean, there's so many stories
- 17:15Speaker 3: up and down music row. I would probably just go
- 17:17Speaker 3: for a walk and just see what comes out.
- 17:19Speaker 2: Yeah, that's always the popular answer. I would love to
- 17:22Speaker 2: see what Patsy thinks of you know, me thrown now too.
- 17:26Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I know, I can't even imagine. I
- 17:28Speaker 3: need to go, like look up some photos of what
- 17:30Speaker 3: it would have looked like back then. Now I'm curious,
- 17:32Speaker 3: I know.
- 17:33Speaker 1: Yeah, she would probably have a hay day now.
- 17:37Speaker 2: Well to Neil, thank you so much for being on
- 17:40Speaker 2: Taking a Walk Nashville today. Everyone can go check out
- 17:42Speaker 2: your new single if Somebody told me you were dying,
- 17:46Speaker 2: and we are looking forward to all of your upcoming music.
- 17:50Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
- 17:50Speaker 1: I really appreciate it.
- 17:53Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to Taking a Walk Nashville with Sarah Harrelson.
- 17:57Speaker 1: Please check out our other shows produced by a buzz
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