Nicole Shortland is no stranger to the stage and although she was signed to a record deal with Universal at just 13 years old, Shortland is pretty new to the country scene. At Live in the Living Room Gives Back, Shortland spoke about her journey back to country music, last minute guitar changes and how Lainey Wilson knows who she is.
On Sunday 7th April, at The Bedford pub in Balham, London, country music artists and singer songwriters gathered for a day of intimate Nashville style writer’s rounds in aid of a Dementia UK. Live in the Living Room – the organisers of the event – arranged the day into eight sets of rounds, each hosting three artists that showcased three of their songs and spoke about the stories behind them. Nicole Shortland was part of the opening round with AKA Chris and Tony, and Phil Hooley.
Shortland was let down last minute by her guitarist and picked her own guitar up to rehearse at midnight before the gig. “I’m not a guitarist,” she announced to the crowd before her first song as she explained the situation. She was, of course, met by friendly faces and a patient and understanding audience but to the untrained eye, there were no faults in her playing. “It was quite nice actually,” she told me when we caught up after her round, “it gave me some freedom to empty out when I needed to or when I felt like, ‘oh my god I can’t play that chord, I’m going to do it wrong’, so we’ll just not play it”. With the success of her first gig playing the guitar in the bag, Shortland spoke about how she envisages her sound moving forward. “I’m comfortable playing along with things…but the goal is for me to play acoustic and someone else play electric so there’s a whole load of stuff going on.” An impressive feat considering Shortland taught herself to play the guitar as a teen watching Taylor Swift tutorials on YouTube, put it down when she moved house at 16 and didn’t touch it again until last year!
Shortland may have only landed on the country music scene last summer, but she has been a musician her whole life. At just 13 years old, she was signed with Universal as part of a girl band, going on to sign with Sony as a solo artist at 16. From here, she became more of a performer than a writer until she fell out of love with music entirely, battling with some mental health issues (and we love her for her openness surrounding this) and took a break from it all. And I mean all of it. She wasn’t even listening to any music. No Spotify, no YouTube, no radio. Until one quiet day, mid house clean, it all felt just a bit too quiet. “I was like, ‘Alexa, play Taylor Swift!” Nicole, girl, we have all been there. “I said to my partner, I wish I could just release country music, and he was like…so do it.”
Something smashes outside our interview room (read: the small, squashed dressing room inside the green room), derailing our poignant moment about how Taylor Swift brought Shortland full circle. From teaching her the guitar in the first place, to bringing her back home, Taylor Swift and country music have grounded her through her journey as a musician.
Shortland has two singles released already; Ride and Out of Town Girl, with the latter being streamed over 27 thousand times. “I was so shocked,” she says to me, her face betraying her bemusement even now. Shortland has worked with a PR company called Now Listen who suggested her track to a few different editorial playlists. “They were like, you know, it’s really early on, don’t expect too much…literally every single playlist said yes.” At this point, someone walks through the door squealing like they’d disturbed someone on the toilet. Obviously, this rendered the two of us good for nothing while we giggled away like children that had been caught at hide and seek. “They all picked up the song,” she says as we regain composure, “you can see on your artist Spotify where it comes from and some people have saved it or added it to their own playlists. It just went down really well”.
Considering Shortland is only ten months into her country journey, she already has an impressive back catalogue of performances, including Buck and Bull’s bottomless brunches and New Year’s Eve party in London as well as The Long Road Festival in Leicestershire. “I saw that they were accepting applications and was like, oh, they must have forgotten to take their link down, I’ll just apply anyway,” she says about The Long Road festival, applying on a whim a couple of weeks before the show, not thinking she’d ever get a slot. “And then they replied like, yeah you’ve got a slot.” Shortland jokes about how she does most things with minimal time to prepare, including preparing a full band for her Long Road gig with ten days to go. (A personal quality I find highly relatable.)
Shortland has also been spotted by country music icon, Lainey Wilson, for covering her song, ‘Smells Like Smoke’. “I was singing it sat in the desk chair and I thought, ‘I’m going to video myself’,” she tells me, adding in that she isn’t comfortable with self-promo and never normally films herself for content. “So, I posted it and she commented, ‘you go girl, killing it’.” THE Lainey Wilson – now if she doesn’t know a good country singer when she sees one, I don’t know who does!
You can catch Nicole Shortland at Country on the Coast and keep your eyes peeled on her social media for more information about shows this year - instagram, Facebook and TikTok
Watch the whole writer's round with Nicole Shortland, Phil Hooley and AKA Chris and Tony here.
This interview was conducted in collaboration with Live in the Living Room
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