Bree Marie Fish
Although she’s just now releasing her first U.S. album, MacKenzie Porter is no stranger to country fans—or to those with a love of modern sci-fi.
The triple threat singer/songwriter/actress built up an impressive IMDb resume before hitting the Billboard charts, including a memorable spot as the co-starring lead of Netflix’s time-hopping thriller Travelers from 2016 to 2018. Since then, she’s followed with a series of story-building singles, racking up six Number Ones across her native Canada, Australia, and the U.S., and a 2X Platinum, multi-week chart- topper with Dustin Lynch on her breakthrough “Thinking ’Bout You.” But with a mix of mood- boosting energy and emotional insight, this stateside album debut might be the role she was made for.
According to her, Nobody’s Born with a Broken Heart (out April 26) is the project she came to Nashville to make a full 10 years ago, back before she got sidetracked by that three-season run of Travelers. And yes, the fiddle-playing former ranch kid is aware of the “ten-year-town” cliché.
“It’s been a long process, so it feels good to finally let people hear it,” she says with relief. “Everybody has a different story, and, to me, country lyrics are some of the hardest to write, so you need to practice that, and that just takes time. But it does feel different now. I think the other things [I’ve done] have been little moments, where this is a full body of work. It’s a full story.”
Described as a 19-song, all-encompassing heartbreak album, “full” is a fair way to look at Nobody’s Born with a Broken Heart. Full of feeling, full of shimmering country-pop vitality, and, eventually, full of optimism for the future.
Comprised of songs co-written or found during her journey, some come from Porter’s arrival in Nashville, while others were penned in between 18-hour days on L.A. film sets. Still more were only written recently, after she got married and began imagining her first child—a daughter who, at the time of this interview, was just weeks away from arrival.
All along, Porter had the breathtaking voice and heart-focused creative vision, but says it took years of work to pull a full album together. After the steamy 2021 duet “Thinking ’Bout You” spent a record 28 weeks in the Top 10 of Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, Porter hit the road hard, and also started feeling the weight of high expectations. She says Lynch was instrumental in the growth that came from it.
“It definitely opened up a lot of doors and definitely added some more pressure,” she says of the hit. “Dustin is an incredible mentor and friend now, and I really look up to him. I was lucky to have those experiences with somebody that’s a pro and knows what they’re doing, because there were so many things we did like late-night shows and morning TV, all this stuff I had never done before.”
Nobody’s Born with a Broken Heart finds her emerging from that time, newly confident both creatively and personally. Produced by Joey Moi (Nickelback, Florida Georgia Line, Morgan Wallen), the set boldly fuses a modern- Nashville edge with the Western influence of her childhood, spent on a sixth-generation cattle and bison ranch near Medicine Hat, Alberta. And while the songs do push her sound forward with an amped-up digital buzz, she drew a hard line when it came to leaving room for her fiddle, plus mandolin, banjo, steel guitar, and more.
Thematically, the set captures all different kinds of heartbreak, from the typical romantic ups and downs of dating (or even married life) to the struggle of getting a career off the ground. But it’s a holistic view of the emotional world, always delivered with maturity and quick-hitting lyrics that land on sharp, attention-grabbing hooks. Early releases like “Easy to Miss” and the windows-down streaming hit “Pickup” helped set the album’s course—a 100-mph whirlwind of rhythm and post-breakup jealousy. But the full track list is so big, it offers plenty of space for nuance and plenty of time to move on.
Tracks like “Wrong One Yet” are more hopeful even while staying guarded, showing off Porter’s fiddle inside a swaying tribute to a new relationship. One that might actually work out. And while the dramatic “Confession” offers a gentle admission that some feelings never go away, tunes like “Sucker Punch” smash any lingering memories of a lost love for good. Written back in 2017, Porter calls its eerie roots- pop energy “Celtic country,” and says it describes the agonizing moment you realize something is well-and-truly over, years after the fact.
“There are sometimes things you hold onto for a long time, thinking, ‘Maybe this will come back around. Maybe this relationship will resurface at some point,’” she says. “The realization that that’s never going to happen hits like a ton of bricks.”
Meanwhile, “Have Your Beer,” is an empowered country-pop anthem that reminds an ex “don’t forget who broke up with who.” Co- written with two of Porter’s best friends, Lydia Vaughn and Parker Welling, it’s a clever kiss-off, playing on the old “can’t have your cake and eat it too” adage. Others like the stunning “Foreclosure” work with a Fleetwood Mac-style of soft focus rock, comparing a long-term relationship to a fixer-upper house—and wondering if it’s really worth the effort. But finally, tracks like “Less Is More” find peace in one of the catchiest “be happy” anthems since Bobby McFerrin told us all not to worry. Porter finishes on the title track, “Nobody’s Born With a Broken Heart.”
Rising from silence like a midnight epiphany, the gentle anthem was one of the last songs written for the project and came after years of putting lost love and shattered romantic dreams against an up-tempo backdrop. Suddenly, Porter felt a shift. The kind that comes from a new beginning, after the heartbreak has run its course. Now, she’s kind of glad the album took so long.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I started thinking about how nobody’s born with a broken heart. My daughter will be born perfect and innocent and whole and naive, and then she’s going to probably fall in love, and she’s going to have disappointments, but that shows you really went for it in life and took risks. That you loved people and probably got hurt along the way,” she says. “That’s what living really is to me.”