“Everyone needs to get on a stage and be embarrassed one time in their life,” says Cece Coakley, a singer-songwriter based in Nashville. “I cannot stress enough to anyone who goes to a concert. We see everything, we hear you say things. I know you're talking, and it's hurting my feelings.”
The Tennessee native released her debut EP Tender in 2022 after cultivating an online community. From sharing songs from her childhood bedroom to moving to Nashville and touring with artists like Medium Build, Stephen Sanchez, Field Guide and Ella Jane, Cece Coakley grew up a lot on tour.
“I was still in college when I first started touring,” she says. “I would play a sold out show opening for one of my favorite artists, and then I would be in the green room, like submitting an essay. It was very Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus core.” In some ways it was a fantasy. In other ways, it was a reality check. Touring wasn’t glamorous, she found, it was exhausting and sometimes even embarrassing. But getting the chance to share her music with the audiences makes the hard shows worth it — so does hearing what her songs mean to people.
Raised on female lyricists and coffee shop radio, Cece Coakley’s music is rooted in narrative songwriting tinged with nostalgia. She reflects on the past, on home, and worries about the future — don’t we all. But Coakley’s musings aren’t one-dimensional, they’re kaleidoscopic and welcoming, inviting the listener to see themselves in her life, without sparing the specifics.
Growing up in East Knoxville, she’s inspired by genre-defying female country artists like Taylor Swift and Kacey Musgraves as well as narrative folk indie singer-songwriters who pull from the world and create new ones. But she’s also inspired by classic country music, bringing in their emotion and soulful yearning.
No one is more surprised at this influence than Coakley, who says: “A lot of that classic country is so inspiring with the storytelling and the songwriting that I think I grew up hating living in the South for obvious reasons. But looking back, it inspired so much of my songwriting.”
But Coakley is carving her own path. She spoke to Popdust about her new music, being on the road, and resisting the urge to be unhappy. Indie-folk singers can be known for their melancholy, she understands, and mournful reflection has been her bread and butter. But Coakley is learning how to embrace good feelings and let them inspire her music, too.
POPDUST: How did you write your first EP?
Cece Coakley: I wrote all of those songs before I moved to Nashville. I'm from a town in East Tennessee called Knoxville, and I grew up there my whole life. I went to school outside of Nashville for a couple years, then I got moved home during the pandemic. That's where I was like, Okay, this is my only chance to full send into trying to do music. I was like, I’m running out of time, I'm in my childhood bedroom. So I just locked myself in my room and wrote every single day until I had something I actually liked. And it all just snowballed from there.
POPDUST: Did you already have a sound that you were gravitating to, or was it all happening at the same time?
Cece Coakley: It was all kind of happening at the same time. I think I just never thought that doing music was a legitimate possibility at that point. I went to school for music business thinking, I guess I can be a manager or something. I just wanted to be involved. I was buying myself time in college thinking I would never be able to just full send into music stuff. So I was like, I'll figure it out by the time I graduate. I feel like it's a very relatable statement.
POPDUST: So you decide you’re going to go for it. What next? How did you go about writing the first EP?
Cece Coakley: Totally, I had been writing songs since I was in the fourth grade, and they were probably the worst songs that have ever existed. So I didn't have a Taylor Swift starting young situation. But since I never thought of it as a real possibility, I never fully pursued that. Growing up in the South, I was just so inspired by Taylor Swift and those country girls you can look to and be like, Oh, they have the same problems I do. Having very relatable songwriting like that was what first really inspired me. I think I used songwriting growing up as a way to figure out my emotions. I feel like a lot of children don't have that self regulation tool, so I used it mostly to just be like, Oh, that guy you had a crush on in fifth grade was so mean to you.
I waited so long to get on Tiktok. I lasted almost all of lockdown without being on Tiktok – I literally need a t shirt that’s like, “I survived.” But I was seeing some of my friends who are songwriters and musicians posting the things they're creating while they were home, and it getting insane traction. And in my head, I was just like, I can do that. We'll never have this amount of time to just try. So around August of the pandemic, I downloaded Tiktok, and I was like, I'm going to post something every single day. I'm going to create something. And it got me into such a great habit of just creating to create. I was like, I don't care if this gets like, 1000 likes, like, I'm just doing this to grow the way that my mind works with music. And having that much free time and the passion to actually try changed my life.
POPDUST: How did your writing evolve during that time?
Cece Coakley: I made the decision to just dive in head first. I wanted to focus on being transparent with myself. And I think once you can be so upfront with yourself to know where your weaknesses are, that's where you can make those weaknesses stronger. So I think that constant internal editing gave me a stronger sense of confidence and compass of where I want to go. I don't want to look at myself every day and be like, this is what’s terrible about you. But I think having those periods of rebirth — that sounds so dramatic, but being able to clock yourself so you can grow from your weaknesses really made all the difference.
POPDUST: Did you have a similar period of editing — or rebirth — between the first and the second EP.
Cece Coakley: Totally. I think during the first project I was just like, oh my god, I can't believe I'm doing this. Unfortunately, I feel like I didn't really believe in myself at that point. I didn’t want to let down the people who gave me a platform to share myself so I just wanted to make something for everyone to enjoy. But moving into the second project — and in the project I'm working on right now — it's been just, what do I like? What do I care about? I think people gravitate more towards art that they can tell the artist is genuinely connecting with. And I think I definitely matured. I wrote the first project when I was 18 and 19 — which should just be illegal. The fact that things that I thought when I was 19 exist forever.
POPDUST: So you feel like you’ve grown up in the time between?
Cece Coakley: Now I have multiple years under my belt. Somehow, in three years, I lived so much more life that gave me a different perspective on what I want to say and how I want to say it. Especially because I started touring a bunch and getting to actively play new songs and see the live reaction. So I could edit and change and tweak from seeing people's immediate reaction. Touring makes you become an adult really fast. You are your own boss, but you also are employing people. It is a very crazy dynamic that I didn't realize. Getting to tour was like the one thing I wanted to do with my life. And I was like, I will be content, and I will never ask for anything else. But it is the hardest part of the job. Because if you are not at a Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo level, everything is really shitty until you get to the show. You're driving 10 hours. You're sleeping on a friend of a friend's couch, which can be so awkward. You have to rely so much on other people and you don't really have control over the outcome. So letting myself be grateful for the experience while knowing it was going to be difficult helped me grow up so much so fast.
POPDUST: How do you embrace the vulnerability of being on stage? It’s one thing to write a song, another to put them online, and then it's a whole other thing to perform them in person.
Cece Coakley: I do it because I feel as if I have to. I can't imagine doing anything else with my life. So I'm willing to embarrass myself to share what I have to say. It's like being a voice for someone. And there are the shitty shows, there are the talking crowds. But then one person comes up to you and is like, oh, I just got out of a very physically abusive relationship and your song was the catalyst for that. Just one of those stories will keep me going for like, a year of my life. I don't care what I have to do to share with those people. Because if this can help me, hopefully it can help someone else.
POPDUST: How does that feedback, if at all, inform your writing process?
Cece Coakley: I feel like I'll just write 100 songs about my life and figure out what I need to hear. When I try out different sets live, I take into account if people really resonated with a song. That can definitely inform the release schedule and process. But when it comes to writing, it all ends up being about my life. People these days are connecting to very personal and specific songwriting that has nothing to do with their lives. So getting the opportunity to apply personal things in my life makes the listening experience more creative for the listener.
POPDUST: Is there anyone that you're listening to now or that you admire doing that type of songwriting?
Cece Coakley: I really love artists like Billie Marten. She's based in the UK. I saw her play a solo show in Nashville a couple months ago that altered my universe. She was talking about certain songs she wrote that she was like, Oh, I worked in a pub in London to try and get stories. And this is a song about a regular that came in. That’s so cool. I want to full send in that direction.
Like Andy Shauf will do whole concept albums about a story or a character. That’s insane. I asked my friends a couple weeks ago, if you could see any show in the Sphere, what show would you want to see? I was literally like, I need to see Andy Shauf in the sphere. Like every album fully acted out on the big screen. It will never happen, but I'm hell bent on finding a way to get him in there.
POPDUST: You also mentioned Taylor Swift. Who are the other people who shaped your early perception of songwriting?
Cece Coakley: Not growing up with a phone, it was mainly radio hits. Any artist that I was obsessed with growing up was probably playing on the Sirius XM Coffee House station. The singer songwriter girls like Corinne Bailey Ray, Sara Bareilles, or Nora Jones were so pivotal. Female singer songwriters, stripped and acoustic, was something that I didn't even know as an option for so long. It was just a cool time for music and I'm taking inspiration from those people who still live in the back of my head. And now the songwriter, girlies are back. Like Lizzy McAlpine. One of my goals for 2024 was to get on the coffee house station. You heard it here first.
POPDUST: Thematically, what are you thinking about for your next project?
Cece Coakley: I think this next chapter of music is coming at a very pivotal time in my life of losing people but meeting new people. It’s the crossroads of heartbreak and the excitement of things that are new and shiny. I think for a really long time, I wasn't writing love songs or songs about being happy. But now I’m like, wow, I wasted so much time being upset or being jealous or complaining that it's put like a lens over things that were really beautiful. But in this new season of life, I have adopted the mindset of accepting the things I can't change. And especially being an indie artist, there's always something to complain about and there's always something that needs to be done. But reframing the way that I look at my life, like I'm so lucky to live the life that I lead, and I am getting to follow my dreams, no matter how difficult the process to get there is. I think within this next process, I wanted to have music that said life can be good if you let it be good. So the next songs are fun and I had a really fun time making these songs, and I'm really excited to share some new stuff soon.