We caught up with Danielle Bradbery ahead of her performance at Introducing Nashville at Cadogan Hall – alongside Walker Hayes, Rachel Wammack and Travis Denning – to talk all about her third album, the evolution of her music and songwriting and her love for her fans.The full interview is available on the podcast on Spotify or iTunes.
I’ve lost track now; what number trip is this over to the UK for you?
I believe five.
What is it that keeps you coming back?
I mean of course for the fans you know, I’ve luckily and fortunately gained a fan base over here which has been amazing. Yeah, so if they tell me I’m going back to London, I’m so excited.
Now you’re back for the ‘Introducing Nashville’ series, what does it mean to you to come back and perform your songs and delve into why you wrote the songs that you did?
Yeah ‘Introducing Nashville’ is really cool, because us four artists get to come over here and kind of represent country music in the US. I think the fans here are very loyal and they just listen to everything you have to say and sing, the songwriter round set-up – when we’re all on stage at once – is I think perfect for the crowds over here, because they just want to hear the stories and the songs and that’s exactly what we’re doing. Every show has been a success, we’ve done meet and greet after the show and to hear the new fans we’ve made just in one night is cool. Things like that are very important.
Your latest release was the ‘Yours Truly’ sessions, which really showed the diversity and range of your voice. That must have been such a project to undertake.
Yeah, the ‘Yours Truly’ project was very very fun for me because I wanted to show people, I love country music but how I grew up was around so many different genres and kinds of music and I don’t just listen to country. What I listen to on my phone or driving in my car and hanging out with friends, it’s dancing, it’s hip hop and RnB. Something that’s very interesting is my mom’s side of the family is a little bit Hispanic so I listen to Spanish music and all kinds of things, so getting to do that project was just really really fun.
It’s interesting seeing how all those songs still worked with a country twist and how some of those songs that are pop could have been country.
Oh yeah it’s very flexible, one of the covers that I did on the ‘Yours Truly’ thing was ‘Psycho’ by Post Malone. What’s cool about him is that he has such a huge love for country music but that song is so hip hop and rap, but somehow the creativivity that I got to play with, we turned it into this slow ballad which was so cool.
Talking about your own songwriting and experiences with ‘I Don’t Believe We Met,’ there’s such a diversity of songs on that album. It’s one of those albums you just fall in love with different tracks at different times.
Yeah and that’s kind of how I wrote it, was different stages of that time of my life, which is cool because I really didn’t plan it out. I knew I was making a second record and I knew that was our project, but since I dove into songwriting very heavily during that time, I was also going through a really crazy breakup and I was the one that broke up with him, but still I was really sad. There’s just all these emotions that were happening during the making of that album. You can literally hear all the stages that I went through, so I kept it and it’s been my most relatable music yet.
‘Potential’ really just showcased the complete range of your voice… What was the story behind that song and the inspiration behind it?
‘Potential’ specifically, I was writing with a particular friend of mine and songwriter, Emily Weisband – I relate to her the most I think and when we get in a room together we’re automatically on the same page. She knew exactly what was going on with me at the time and she actually had the idea of ‘Potential.’ She said, ‘I have this title called ‘Potential’ and it could be falling in love with somebody for who they could be rather than who they are.’ I thought ‘woah, I’ve never heard it put that way and I’ve never heard a song sing about that.’ I related for sure, I mean with that guy I was with, he had so much potential but we were both so immature and just needed to grow up. We wrote this song and it was actually the first one that set the mood for the whole record, and so we kept that as the core, and so it was very interesting and that song is always going to be special because it was kind of the umbrella over the whole album.
Absolutely. One of my other favourite tracks was ‘Human Diary’ – it’s an interesting story of how that came to you…
Oh yeah, it was actually an Emily Weisband song. One of the days I was having my breakdown I was actually supposed to record one of my other songs ‘Worth It,’ and we were actually running out of time with producing the record. At the time, I was going to record ‘Worth It’ and then it was going to be finished, but then Emily was like ‘can I show you what we did to this song, we stripped it down to a piano vocal, and I really feel like you’re going to relate to it.’ I thought, ‘oh god, here come the tears.’ She played the song for me, and I thought ‘this is unreal.’ I recorded that song instead of ‘Worth It’ and I was like ‘I have to squeeze this song onto the record.’ It’s very special and it’s amazing, the fans listen to the music and they put themselves in the song and relate to it with their own story and that’s exactly what I did with that outside song.
What’s up for the rest of the year then? Obviously you’re finishing up this tour but then what else is in the pipeline?
I am currently working on my third album, also doing the songwriting and listening to other people’s songs. I actually just got a song on the new ‘Charlie’s Angels’ movie, which I’m still pinching myself because this is my first time with a movie like that. It’s co-produced by Ariana Grande and it’s all women on the soundtrack, so women empowerment. That comes out November 1st and it’s available for pre-order now, it’s called ‘Blackout’ so I’m really excited for it.
Your first album was fresh off The Voice, the second was kind of a re-invention so what do you want people to take away from this third album, where do you want it to sit?
I think so far it’s going to be more about life than one specific topic. My second album was very relationship-heavy – I’ll still have a little bit of those, I’m in a new relationship and I’m happy with it, so it’s a different place. I kind of want to touch base with my core Texas country and bring it all back to where it all started but current, so current and old country mix, so we’ll see how that turns out.
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Final Few
White wine or whiskey?
Whiskey.
Give up songwriting or performing?
Performing.
Record you couldn’t live without if you were stuck on a desert island?
Ooh, any Ariana Grande record.
Do you have a pre-show ritual?
We jam out to hip hop music.
Complete the sentence…
Music is… powerful.
Country music is… healing.
Danielle Bradbery is… hopefully inspiring.
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Listen to the full interview on the podcast
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