26-year-old Army brat and ex-high school wrestler Reyna Roberts’ tenacity in pursuing Nashville success has an unquestionable lineage.
Via her Sept. 8, 2023-released debut country double-album “Bad Girl Bible,” she’s learning how to balance her salacious pop appeal, country’s traditions and developing a sound and style broadly appealing to the genre’s mainstream-trending fanbase.
Roberts’ career at present is at a unique crossroads.
On the one hand, like many thousands in Music City and other country music destination locales nationwide, she is, as she tells The Tennessean, a “dreamer using learning blocks to write songs.”
However, she’s also a Black female artist whose roots are not explicitly Southern or deeply countrified. Plus, she’s an avowed fan of Beyoncé and high-fashion, skin-revealing couture.
Her skills as a songwriter, credits alongside Danny Myrick (Jason Aldean’s 2008 hit “She’s Country”), plus a pianist with world-class vocal training, have allowed her songs “Raised Right” and “Stompin’ Grounds” to earn her visibility via Amazon’s “For Love and Country” documentary, CMT’s “Next Women of Country” program, ESPN’s “Sunday Night Football” and opening for Reba McEntire in 2022.
“I dress, look and sound different than artists who have come before me in Nashville, so remaining genuine to exactly who I want to be is hard,” Roberts continues, regarding her path.
In her June-released visualizer for “Country Club,” she continues a seductive, steamy trend she’s maintained since her 2022 releases “Pretty Little Devils” and “Another Round.”
“More than anything, for my whole life, I’ve loved dressing like pop stars who like borrowing moods for their shoots,” says Roberts, calmly explaining one of her most consistently eye-raising career questions.
If Roberts were another artist, she could one day aspire to be Carrie Underwood.
Currently, the space between who Roberts is and who she aspires to become feels like telling the story of an empress in new clothes.
Her latest material showcases how well her awareness of her situation and artistic maturation are progressing.
As her stardom surged in June 2020, Mickey Guyton re-posted a social media video of Roberts performing a cover of Underwood’s “Drinking Alone.” Underwood herself followed suit.
Navigating the space between consistently high visibility and sustained career traction has been one of Roberts’ difficulties in Nashville.
Achieving traction could lead her to the potentially very lucrative, rarefied space for female artistry between Billboard’s country radio and all-genre Hot 100 charts.
A female country artist hasn’t hit the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 since Underwood was a competitor on American Idol in 2005, or Taylor Swift decided she was “never ever getting back together” with country music seven years after that.
Jacksonville native and Belmont-educated singer-songwriter Kendall Brower (recent hits with K-pop artists ITZY) and pop-crossover guitarist of the moment David Mescon (work with Megan Moroney and Tigirlily Gold, plus Nicki Minaj, in recent years), Roberts describes achieving a level of “fearlessness” in her craft.
It continues Roberts’ evolutionary process that could lead her to develop into an artist who can achieve pop-crossover female country stardom.
Via album tracks like “Miranda” — yes, inspired by tracks like the Academy of Country Music Triple Crown Award-winner’s 2007-released “Gunpowder & Lead” — Roberts is now gaining greater fluency in the musical languages required for female artists to cross over into this novel, rarely-reached modern musical space.
Talk to her about her current single “One Way Street” and she describes “Adele and Sia-style piano melodies” in a country song about unrequited love.
She pauses and smiles when asked to summarize her creative process over the past three years.
“I’ve arrived at being a classically modern outlaw presentable to country and pop audiences. My whole life has been spent preparing for the superstar future I feel God has planned for me, whenever the time is right for that to happen.”
