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Singer/songwriter Tiera loved singing from an early age.
The Alabama native started singing in the choir when she was in elementary school, but her passion really took flight when she reached high school and began coming to Nashville to play shows and sit in on cowriting sessions. Less than a decade later, Tiera has signed with one of her songwriting heroes, Nicolle Galyon, as the flagship songwriter for the publishing arm of her female-driven label, Songs & Daughters, in partnership with Big Loud Publishing and Warner Chappell Music.
As a fan of Galyon, Tiera always wanted to write with the powerhouse behind hits like Dan + Shay’s “Tequila” and Miranda Lambert’s “Automatic,” but this was beyond a dream come true.
“Never in a million years would I have thought that I would be one of the first writers with her publishing company,” she says.
Tiera
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The Taylor Swift Method: When I started writing it was more of a diary. The first few songs that I wrote I had just gone through breakups, so I was so dramatic, writing breakup songs. I was—and still am—super into Taylor Swift and she was writing breakup songs, so I was like, ‘this is what I’ve got to do.’ So at the beginning I was just writing songs for myself and getting the emotions out. It wasn’t until I moved to Nashville, I realized that you can write for other artists as well, and I fell in love with that. That’s when I started looking at songs I loved and realized I was seeing the same names [of songwriters] and Nicolle was one of those people. I was dissecting her songs when I was in middle school trying to learn how to write.
Reality TV comes to call: A couple years into me being in Nashville I had been playing shows and writing around town, but someone on my team heard about the show and said I should try out. I was against it at first because I never wanted to be on a music competition show, but it was the perfect opportunity. They wanted us to represent ourselves as artists. They let us pick our songs and pick our outfits, so it was all positives for me. It was such a surreal experience. Even thinking back to it I’m like, ‘Did I really sing in front of Shania Twain?’
Meet your heroes: I had been working with the Big Loud team for a while. Sam Jervey [Senior Creative Director] had come to one of my shows and really took an interest in my music and she started setting me up on cowrites. I would send her the songs that I was writing, she would send them over to Nicolle, and Nicolle loved the music. We started working together a little bit, and at the beginning I was like, ‘Oh, this is great! I'm going to get to write with Nicolle!’ I had no idea that she was creating this company Songs & Daughters. We had been working together for a couple of months when I started to realize they were interested in me for the company. I told them that my goal was to focus on writing and really figuring out what I want to say as an artist and a songwriter. Um, because at the time she just had the record label. I didn't know that she had interest in making a publishing company as well. It just felt really great when they came to me and told me that they wanted me to be their first writer. It's insane! I'm still trying to process it!
From breakup songs to love songs: I got engaged right before everything shut down [for COVID-19], so we’ve been forced to spend every second of every day together. Luckily, we’ve been together for six years now, so it’s nothing new to us but it’s been interesting being together all day working from home. He’s a filmmaker and he’ll be in the living room doing his work and I’m in the bedroom doing a write on Zoom since we’re not writing in person right now. I've always written love songs about him, like to the point where I'll bring them to him, and he's not really surprised. I’ve always been on the love song train, so that part hasn’t changed too much, but I have written one wedding song since all this started.