Tenille Townes

“That’s what I love about music,” country-pop singer Tenille Townes tells Apple Music, talking about her 2020 hit “Come as You Are”. “It kind of puts down the walls of expectations of me feeling like, ‘Okay, I have to be a certain way,’ or, ‘I have to pretend.’ When I’m listening to music I just feel like myself, and I hope people feel that when they hear that song.” With the tune’s uplifting message and bouncy rhythm, it’s tough not to feel, at the very least, a little bit liberated. Townes, born in Alberta, Canada, in 1994, has a gift for songwriting that gets to the core of people. While Townes got her start on radio in her teens, it was her relocation to Nashville and 2018’s driving, sympathetic “Somebody’s Daughter”—a song about seeing a woman down on her luck—that proved to be her big break. Since then, she’s toured and made friends with Miranda Lambert (appearing on Lambert’s cover of Elvin Bishop’s “Fooled Around and Fell in Love”) and released 2020’s critically acclaimed The Lemonade Stand. That record, inspired by her hometown of Grande Prairie, established her as a rising star with a knack for pop magic, as songs like the romantic “Holding Out for the One” and the galloping “White Horse” practically burst with irresistible hooks and melodies.