Taken from this week’s Future Pop mailer. Click here to subscribe.
Since I overdosed on country around the time of C2C in March, I haven’t been listening to it so much, but this week I revived the obsession thanks to the release of the new Maren Morris album and the new Ward Thomas single. I also discovered a promising new artist by the name of Jillian Jacqueline. If she wasn’t signed to a Nashville publishing company, I might not have even considered her as a country artist – there’s no particular country twang here, and her sound is more singer-songwriter-pop, with Sheryl Crow a likely influence. However, it will certainly appeal to fans of artists such as Maren and the equally brilliant Kacey Musgraves. Prime is the lead track from Jillian’s recent self-titled EP, but it’s still her softer 2014 single Overdue which has the most Spotify plays so far. She’s slowly building a name for herself in a scene that respects hard work and paying your dues more than overnight stardom, so hopefully she’s on the right track to follow her contemporaries into a major label deal and chart success in the year ahead.