Artist Profile: Bailey Bryan

So, like any good songwriter, she decided to come up with a better way to say it herself. “I never really like to label my music, but ‘sensitive bad bitch’ covers it,” she says. That phrase “touches on the subject matter I write about, relationships and emotions. I just want to send a message that feeling your feelings and having emotion does not disqualify you from being a bad bitch.”

Bryan, who grew up in Washington State, moved to Nashville motivated by a love of Taylor Swift and Swift’s ability to be vulnerable in her songwriting. Bryan also cites The Chicks as important influences on her sound. “It’s a wide range of influence.”

Bryan lived in Nashville for more than seven years, where she thrived on the co-writing dynamic that is intrinsic to the city. “I did not realize how unique it was until I moved to L.A. L.A. has its own creative process, of course, but in Nashville, you and one or two other people are in a room with a guitar, and everything is focused on what it is you want to say. I have not found that anywhere else other than Music Row.”

While the Nashville songwriting process is focused on storytelling, Los Angeles is “focused more on the melody and the song. It’s about getting a cool beat first while Nashville is the lyric first,” she says.

Switching it up in Los Angeles has helped take Bryan’s music to the next level, she says, because she can “bring that Nashville sensibility to L.A. She can think about the lyrics and the sick beat. I’m paying attention to all the parts of the song.”

Having grown up on the West Coast, she’s happy to be back closer to home and happy to have easy access to the beach, but still, she’s thrilled to return to Nashville to play on the Bobby hotel rooftop and to go out with her friends on Broadway. The downtown rooftops, she says, “were my entire summer of 2021.” “I lived there for so long and people in Nashville really know my music,” she says. “It’s a different love for music in Nashville that makes live shows really magical.”