Over the past year, country music has seen success stories rise out of exactly that: Lesser-known artists have ascended into the mainstream after finding a new level of authenticity in their music, even if the subject matter of their songs might previously have been deemed too touchy for a country audience.Ī post shared by Brooke Eden example, in 2020, Mickey Guyton rose from being a Nashville mainstay with a handful of modest charting songs to one of the genre’s most important change-makers after she released “What Are You Gonna Tell Her?” and “Black Like Me,” two viral songs about her experience as a Black woman in country music and the world. “Figuring out where I am that day, in that moment in my life, and writing about that experience.” “That’s always how I feel like I get my most honest work, you know,” she adds after a pause.

“I had never been in love before! So that made it a little easier, being in love for the first time, to write love songs. “What’s really wild is I had never written a love song until these songs,” she reveals. I couldn’t do justice to this story on screen without her!” Eden explained when she released the song and its video.īoth “Sunroof” and the forthcoming “Got No Choice” are love songs, which Eden admits is a fresh artistic direction for her. “Her presence in my life has brought me so much sunshine and happiness, and she inspired the song. Eden points to this video as a tangible example of something she couldn’t have made without Hoover’s influence. In fact, Hoover co-stars in the music video for “Sunroof,” the second of Eden’s three new songs, which arrived in early March. I wouldn’t be able to put out this music if I didn’t talk about our love.” “Hilary is such a huge part of my happiness, that there’s no way I can’t talk about her now. “It became no question to me as to why my music didn’t work the first time around, because I wasn’t able to fully be me,” she pointed out in a recent interview with The Washington Post. However, the decision to hide it never sat well with Eden, not only because she felt that she was being dishonest with her fans, but also because she felt the decision to keep that part of her life secret was negatively impacting her music. So, for three and a half years, Eden and Hoover kept their relationship a secret. Openly gay performers were - and remain - rare within the genre, and members of her team told the young singer that being honest about her relationship with fans could cost her her career. At the time, Eden was told to keep the relationship quiet. Brooke Eden Photo by Ford Fairchildīack in 2015, when she was a newcomer to the music industry and embarking on her first-ever radio tour, she started dating Hilary Hoover, a promotions director that she met through her record label. Together, the three songs tell the story of leaving a toxic situation and ultimately finding renewed joy, confidence and love. That song, “No Shade,” is the first of an upbeat three-song set that also includes her brand-new “Sunroof” and the forthcoming “Got No Choice.” It also marks the first song she’s put out in four years, nearly to the day, following 2017’s “Act Like You Don’t.” “Especially after the year of 2020, having a song out that signifies hope and a light at the end of the tunnel, it really means a lot to me.” “It’s the most freeing feeling,” Eden says. In 2021, she’s returning with a trilogy of songs centered around two rare commodities: Warmth and joy.

But out of the global tumult of the past year and a period of personal tumult that preceded it, Eden has created a new musical chapter fueled by hope and optimism. In a lot of ways, it’s a distinctly gray world outside, and has been for a long time. To add to the dreariness of the winter weather, the world is closing in on the one-year mark of the shutdowns. “What is happening?! When I moved to Nashville, I heard the winters here weren’t that bad.” “It’s Snowpocalypse,” Eden says matter-of-factly, on the phone with Country Now. While Brooke Eden is a Florida native, she’s in Nashville these days, and like the rest of the city, she’s stuck indoors waiting out the storm.

It’s a bitterly cold afternoon in February of 2021, and Nashville is snowed in after one of the city’s biggest winter storms in recent memory.

Songs about optimism