Caitlyn Smith

One Liner: Heart-felt Nashville country tunes
Wikipedia Genre: Country
Spotify Says Similar To: Kelleigh Bannen and Maggie Rose
Home: Nashville, from Minnesota.

Poster Position: 20
Slot: Sunday, ?

Thoughts:  She's got a piece in Rolling Stone about how she came up, and I found this bit of it pretty interesting: "An obsession with Americana icon Patty Griffin led Smith to Nashville when she was 18. She noticed Griffin's name on the Americana Music Festival's lineup and made a cold call. "I thought, 'I wonder if they have a spot for me?' So I emailed them," she remembers, "and they wrote back, 'Yes! We'll pay you $200. Come play!'""  WTF.  It had to have been harder than that.  Otherwise I'm going to e-mail C3 and tell them I want a spot to come sing David Lee Roth songs with a karaoke machine, and that I expect $200 and as much Austin Beerworks as I can drink.  She ended up in Nashville writing for other folks, and freaking killed it.  Had songs performed by Jason Aldean, Lady Antebellum, Rascal Flatts, Garth Brooks, and Kenny Rogers with Dolly Parton.  I mean, Garth and Kenny Rogers aren't the biggest current stars or anything, but damn, that is legit.  She also had a hand in the Megan Trainor/ John Legend song "Like I'm Gonna Lose You."  She's got songwriting chops.
And her voice is great too - its not like she can only write.  No full albums, just two EPs, 2014's Everything to You and 2017's Starfire.  The songs from that new EP are much more popular on Spotify than the older EP, although I'm not entirely sure I'd actually keep her in the "country" bucket after listening through this a few times.  The most listened to track is the title track from that EP, "Starfire," with 6.9 million streams.

Her picture on that cover makes me think of the main girl from Glee (or at least the main girl from the first few seasons before I gave up on that show).  But see what I mean?  This is country in the way that some Sheryl Crow songs might be, or less country in the way some Carrie Underwood songs are.  I don't know.  She certainly isn't following a paint by numbers thing from the Nashville powers that be.  Ah, but YouTube just autoplayed to a 2014 song called "Everything to You," which is all banjo plucking and drawling-accented, rough-edged singing.  This was the country period, I suppose.
"This Town in Killing Me," a spare, plucky lament of being run over and chewed up by Nashville, is pretty clever and sounds kind of like Allison Krauss.  She's got two real videos, and the most popular track of those is "Before You Called Me Baby," with 2.2 million Spotify streams, so I'll give you that one instead of "Tacoma."

Super exciting video of her just standing there.  :)  That one makes me think more of a Bonnie Raitt-type thing going on.  Or Allison Moorer.  Bluesy and powerful. Pretty solid.  Not the kind of music I'd listen to on any given day, but I can definitely appreciate how excellent she is.