INTERVIEW: Alana Springsteen on the pull of country music and the magic of live shows: “There’s a part of me that comes alive when I hit the stage that doesn’t anywhere else.”

Words: Emma Driver
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Published: 20 March 2025

Nashville-based country singer Alana Springsteen is set for a big year in 2025. The 24-year-old singer and songwriter is currently in Australia for the CMC Rocks Qld festival, which musters international and local country talent for a loud-and-proud weekend in Ipswich. She’s been hard at work in Nashville on her second album, the follow-up to her acclaimed debut Twenty Something (2023), and has a calendar packed with highlights, including a support slot on Keith Urban’s upcoming tour.

Born in Virginia in the US, Springsteen – no relation to rocker Bruce “The Boss” – moved to Nashville with her family as a teenager, when her gift for singing and writing songs became obvious. Starting her official music career early, she impressed the execs at Sony so much she was signed to a music publishing deal at fourteen – much like Taylor Swift, one of Springsteen’s idols, had done a decade earlier.

Then came a few years of writing and collaborating with Nashville’s finest, including Liz Rose (Swift’s co-writing partner on her early albums), and Springsteen’s first releases, including standouts like her debut EP Alana Springsteen in 2019, and the viral hit single ‘Always Gonna Love You’, a sweeping ballad of new love that left no doubt about the potential in Springsteen’s sweet yet powerful voice.

But it was with Twenty Something – released initially as three linked EPs – that Springsteen admits she found her voice, on a tightly written catalogue of the missteps and new understanding that life in your twenties can bring. In instantly lovable songs like ‘Cowboys and Tequila’ and ‘Goodbye Looks Good on You’, Springsteen leaned as far as she could into country music, with all its well-crafted lyricism and its drive to tell stories. ‘Ghost in My Guitar’, featuring guitar by country legend Chris Stapleton, was its biggest hit. “This song is intentionally not a traditional vocal duet,” Springsteen said on its release. “I wanted it to be a duet between me and a lead guitar.” And it works – a beautiful collaboration with lyrics about an ex she just can’t shake from her songs.

After supporting fellow country artist Luke Bryan on tour last year, and recording a compelling NPR Tiny Desk Concert with her band (featuring cello, in an inspired departure from the traditional country fiddle), Springsteen breathed more live joy into some of the songs from her debut with the mini-album Live from the Ryman, recorded at a show in the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and released in January this year. The Ryman is a famed country music venue and Springsteen sounds right at home on a stage that has hosted the likes of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton and every other American country star you could name. Springsteen’s live versions of favourites like ‘You Don’t Deserve a Country Song’ and ‘Chameleon’ crackle with energy, and her voice – clear, strong and full of storytelling character – captivates the crowd.

“I do love to party. I mean, I’m doing shots of tequila on stage,” Springsteen tells Women In Pop in the interview below, and she’ll be bringing the party to even more arenas this year when she tours with Keith Urban, playing her biggest shows to date. (For a taste, check out her duet with Urban at Nashville’s New Year’s Eve extravaganza last year, where she shines on his hook-up hit ‘Go Home W U’.) With a new album to release, hopefully later in the year, Springsteen is set to knock over some significant career milestones in the months ahead. She spoke with Women In Pop’s Jett Tattersall in Sydney, en route to Queensland for CMC Rocks.

Thank you very much for your time this afternoon, Alana, and welcome to Australia. We know you’re here for the CMC Rocks festival – how is everything going, and how is this place treating you?

It’s been so good. This is my second time in Australia. The first was for the Ridin’ Hearts festival, and it was such a quick trip, unfortunately – only four or five days. I got a taste enough to know I loved it here, got a couple tattoos, fell in love with the fans, and I couldn’t wait to get back. So CMC Rocks was the perfect excuse. And I have a couple days here in Sydney before the craziness begins. I’m a beach girl. I grew up by the water, so it’s my happy place. So being here feels like home, in a way.

Sydney does do beaches – I will give it that …

My gosh, the best! And I can’t wait for the shows. These are some of my first shows of the year. Actually, I’ve been in album-writing mode, just in the studio, in writing rooms, working on my next album. So it’s gonna be really fun to actually play some of this new music and see how it hits the fans, and get to experience it.

You’ve just released Live from the Ryman, a live set from a show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. You’ve referred to the Ryman as like the mother church of country music …

It truly is. I mean, the people who have played there, the people who have come before you –  it’s just steeped in so much history, and it’s iconic. You feel that when you step into the room. There’s a reverence to the space.

For those of us that weren’t there, we’re able to get this beautiful collection of songs from your incredible performance. You really seem to thrive live. What is it about live shows that is so special?

I love that you feel that, even from the album! I’m a live artist, first. Some of the most fulfilling moments of my life are the moments that I get to spend on stage, connecting with people. I started writing songs when I was nine or ten years old, and it’s how I got to know myself. It’s how I make sense of the mess sometimes in my brain. The feeling of standing on a stage, looking out at a crowd of people singing back words that you wrote that were maybe scary, maybe really hard to write – there’s nothing like that. There’s a feeling of connection, just knowing you’re not alone, and that there’s a purpose in all of it, that you can grow and heal together. It’s so beautiful. And there’s a part of me that comes alive when I hit the stage that doesn’t anywhere else, and I kind of chase that feeling.

That’s interesting – as you say, songwriting is very introspective, and I imagine it must be almost a surprise to have those songs sung back at you, like a reminder: “Oh god, you heard those!” But you’ve got some real door-slamming songs too.

You’re so right. I mean, my show is a little bit of a rollercoaster sometimes, because I do love to party. I mean, I’m doing shots of tequila on stage. I’m bringing people on stage. I’m just having fun. I’m jumping into the crowd. I love that high energy, but I also love those moments where you can hear a pin drop in the room, because everybody’s just so together, together in that moment. And it is a good reminder that you’re never alone in the things you go through, and to know that these songs that I write in my bedroom are touching people’s lives all over the world, even here in Australia – it’s so beautiful, and I’m forever grateful for it.

I think the older I get, the more I realise that when I was a kid, it was hard for me to see other people and be seen. And I think that kid is still in there sometimes, and that’s part of the reason I love live music so much, because it’s the most connected I ever feel to people.

Judging by your song ‘Taylor Did’, I assume at some point Taylor Swift raised you. Who else were those women in music, not even necessarily country music, who got you doing what you’re doing now?

Oh, man, there’s so many on that list. I grew up with quite a diverse range of music in the house. My dad loved music, and he always had something playing, whether it was Whitney Houston, Shania Twain, Faith Hill or Carrie Underwood. I was always drawn to big voices. I was drawn to women who exuded power through their vocal and I would just sit on the floor with my little iPod Shuffle, with headphones in, and just listen and lose myself in the melodies and the lyrics.

I also always loved songwriters, artists that really wore their heart on their sleeve through their music, people like Emmylou Harris – the lyrics cut you and just take you on this journey. I fell in love with that really early on. I was a lover of words. I loved writing, I loved reading, and I was inspired by artists that were able to take what was inside and put it on paper. I feel so lucky to be in an industry that’s had so many trailblazer women who have shown me how it’s done.

Have you ever even personally put a country twang on a little Whitney Houston? I’m just curious …

Oh, girl, I have! When I’m sitting at my piano, sometimes I just go to those Whitney Houston songs because the piano licks are so iconic. Like, ‘I Have Nothing’ – that piano riff, it just kills me. Sometimes when I sing them, I find a little bit of country twang, and that’s how you know a really great song: when you can sing it a million different ways and it still hits the same.

I kind of already want to hear that album.

I think you’re on to something!

When it came to your creating your own music, where did the lean into country music come from?

Country, to me, has just always felt like home. I grew up in a small town called Pungo, Virginia, and it’s this really wild cross-section between surf culture and redneck farm culture, like cornfields down the street, and strawberry fields, but also five minutes from the beach. So it’s this really crazy, cool corner of the world, and a pretty small town – everybody knows everybody. My granddad was a pastor. I grew up sitting in church. A lot of those stereotypes were very real, just from a slightly different angle – the coastal angle. And so growing up, those were the stories I related to: that small-town feel, those values.

Country, to me, just has the best songwriters who really know how to take you on a journey with a song. You just find yourself along for the ride in a song in a way that you just don’t feel sometimes in other genres. And that’s what got me.

I feel like in your music you can hear that storytelling tradition, that tradition of songs that are passed from singer to singer, but you also have very personal stories to tell. Does it feel that way to you?

I think most of my music is very autobiographical. Writing is my therapy. It truly is. It’s how I get these feelings out and make sense of them. I mean, I’m thinking about this next era of music, writing this next album, and god, I needed these songs. I needed these songs to help me heal a lot of things, but I also needed to heal to write the songs. So it’s a really funny cycle. And going into this era, I was as confident as I’d ever felt, I felt incredibly strong and grounded and just ready to take on the world. It’s my villain era! I have these really strong songs, like ‘Hold My Beer’, and ‘Cowboys and Tequila’, and that’s what I thought this album was going to be. But as I started getting into the room, I found myself writing these incredibly vulnerable, scary, honest songs that I didn’t even know I needed to write. And it’s funny how the music surprises you.

But to your question: a lot of the stuff I write tends to be personal, but I also just love the connection that it gives me to my fans to know that we share the same stories in some way. Their experiences might be different than mine, but they can relate to the same feelings, and I think that’s a really special thing. And sometimes I tend to tell stories. They may not be specific examples of mine. They might be a way to tell the story, a way to talk about a feeling that might not be my own experience. And sometimes I think it’s fun to do that.

But for the most part, it is very scary. There are real scary, on-the-nose details, and I’m on the edge of my seat as these songs are coming out, thinking, “Oh my god, I’m gonna get some calls!” Some of the songs on this album – I probably should sit down with my parents and have a conversation.

Do you find there’s a strength that comes from the vulnerability, and being able to sit in that space and write in that space?

Yes, girl! I think my view of strength was a little bit wrong in the past, and what I’ve learned writing this album is that being strong means staying soft and knowing that you can be vulnerable and you’re safe enough to do that. It’s real, girl! I love that you picked up on that.

It’s great hearing this thread of “softness within the confidence” in new and younger women singer-songwriters – there’s now space for that, which maybe wasn’t there before. They feel like they’re allowed to be softer and vulnerable. Do you see yourself as part of that?

It feels like people are listening and creating that space, which is so beautiful. This theme of “softness is strength” is something that’s even translated into my melodies and the way that I sing these songs. I find myself getting a lot closer to the mic and whispering, rather than just going for power. And I find that when people listen as I play these songs, they’re taken aback a little bit. It is way more effective when you do it that way than when you scream. It’s like it pulls you in when you hear somebody talking quietly in your ear. You want to listen. You want to lean in. And that’s been a really interesting thing to watch happen. I’m excited to see how that translates into live shows too, and create some more of those intimate moments.

So, you’re here for CMC Rocks, and you’ve been working on your album – what does 2025 look like? What are you excited about? What are you nervous about?

Man, there’s so much to be excited about in 2025. I’ve been in my little cave writing songs, and in the studio making this album, but now I’m at that point where we’re finishing up the record. Writing these songs has taught me so much – like healing some of those patterns, those self-defence mechanisms, the survival mechanisms that you learn as a kid that don’t serve you as an adult. So I’m really excited to get this music out. I think it’s going to really dive a level deeper with my fans, to just go, “Alright, let’s talk. You know me. You’re part of the fam. Let’s get deep.” So I’m really excited to release these songs.

I’m also touring all year. I’m going out with Keith Urban on his tour, and I’m so excited – there’s going to be some of the biggest venues I’ve ever played, one of the longest tours I’ve ever done. Probably a little headline tour once the music comes out. So we’re making plans for that.

I’m just really nervous and anxious and excited – all the feelings – to see what this music does and how it connects, the conversations that it starts between me and my fans, and how that leads into touring. I really can’t wait.

Alana Springsteen’s latest release, Live from the Ryman, was released in January 2025, following on from her acclaimed debut album Twenty Something in 2023. You can download and stream here.

Follow Alana Springsteen on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok

Alana Springsteen will be performing at the CMC Rocks Festival in Queensland from 21-23 March. Tickets on sale now.