Country Next: Bellah Mae

For Bellah Mae, life in her 20s pursuing her dreams as a singer/songwriter has felt a lot like a peach: soft on the outside with a hard seed at the center. This imagery has also become the inspiration for her new EP Keep It Peachy, capturing both the fun and grit that define her as an artist. Mae reflects on writing some of her most personal songs to date, touring across the United States, and finding her place in Nashville’s country music scene after spending most of her life in the United Kingdom.

Music has always been part of the rising star’s story. Raised in a musical family in the UK, she grew up surrounded by instruments and inspired by her grandfather, a rock and roll session musician, and her dad, who helped introduce her to the guitar and piano, which inevitably led to songwriting at a young age. Plus, she spent over 10 years training as a classical soprano.

Mae went on to release a string of UK pop songs like 2022’s “Boyfriend Of The Year,” 2023’s “Drama King,” and 2025’s “Bad Day to Be My Ex.”

While country music wasn’t necessarily popular among her peers growing up, she found herself drawn to the genre’s storytelling and emotional honesty. Now based in Nashville and signed to Sony Music, she’s blending those early influences with her own modern perspective as she carves out her place in country music.

Mae’s new EP, Keep It Peachy, is an introduction to her U.S. fans. Produced by Brett Truitt, JANEVA, and Steven Solomon, and with the rising star co-writing all six of the tracks, the collection captures the highs, lows, and growing pains of life in your twenties. She explores themes of love, heartbreak, insecurity, and self-discovery with a balance of honesty and lighthearted charm. While the songs may feel playful and polished on the surface, each track is rooted in real experiences and emotions.

Continue reading to learn more about Bellah Mae as an artist, the intentions behind her new EP and how her love for music led her to this point.

What inspired the title, Keep It Peachy, and how does it sum up the themes and stories within this collection of songs?

I feel like Keep It Peachy as the title is definitely the best I’ve ever articulated the time of life that I’m at, the project as a whole and just exactly the feel and imagery that I want to get across. I really just love the sentiment of a peach so much. I think it honestly really accurately describes me as an artist. I think I’m very sweet and smiley on the outside and just naturally I am. But then at the core of me is that the songwriter in me has a lot more grit and that stone in the middle of a peach. The songs are dressed up a lot of the time, very cutesy and fun and I don’t know, a bit flirty, but then they are usually about topics that are actually about real stories about real feelings, real emotions. And I just feel like it really describes me as an artist and a songwriter and the way that I put this track list together and wrote the project. 

What was the process like to narrow down the track list and land on these six? 

Choosing an EP is tricky because you have got a shorter tracklist to work with. You’ve got six songs and I’ve been writing this project for a little while with the same team of people. Brett Truitt is the producer across the whole record and then wrote largely with the same four to five people. That’s it. And they’re all very close to me, which I think really helps because it’s a very personal project. This project could never have been written if I didn’t really open up my heart and my mind because it’s just such a personal project in so many different ways. And I think the topics that I’ve landed on that I haven’t talked about, I’ve talked about falling in love for the first time, I’ve talked about insecurities within myself for the first time. Those aren’t topics I’ve explored yet in terms of releasing them out into the world. And so it really helps to have a team of people that you love working with creatively that also know you so well because co-writing is such an interesting world anyway. You walk into a room and just be like, “okay, here’s my deepest, darkest secrets and here’s the inside of my soul and what do we think?” So it’s been such an amazing process and I’ve loved writing it.

Has most of your co-writing been done in Nashville or the UK?

I would say I’ve been writing 95% of everything I’ve done in Nashville, for the past three years anyway. So it’s really been a slow process to get there. There’s a couple tracks that were written in the UK, “Fast Lane” and “Salt and Sugar” were written in the UK and one of my bestest friends in the whole world is also an amazing songwriter and artist. So she wrote “Salt and Sugar” with me in the UK. But other than that, everything has been in Nashville. 

Can you talk about the writing process behind “Salt and Sugar,” which you recently released as a preview of the project?

“Salt and Sugar,” I love how I feel like it really ties into the Keep It Peachy world and the imagery of it. But I love a fun title. I love a flipped title and a fun concept and I just love saying something in a way that’s quite metaphorical or like, “oh yeah, that does say what she’s trying to say.” And I was really trying to do that with… I mean, I do that with all my songs if I can, but especially with this one where I was trying to really get across how confusing it is to fall in love with somebody that wasn’t the person that you thought that they were and sold you on somebody. But actually, I don’t think that they are and just it’s very misleading and you feel very disconcerted, very unsure in yourself and it’s like, did I get it wrong or whatever? But sometimes you couldn’t know any better. And I just thought that this was a very palatable way to put it.

Since this is your first U.S. project, what do you hope that fans take away from hearing you dive into these topics?

I think I’ve always wanted to have this lasting flavor of a big sister type of vibe. I think I love writing about topics that are very real and relatable and I’ll say it exactly how it comes to me. A lot of my lyrics are very diaristic. So I think throughout the whole EP, I think there’s a vein of confidence and just security of positivity that comes from it. Even if I’m talking about being cheated on or even if I’m talking about super personal insecurities, I think, I would, hope that it’s come with a real positive vein to it. And so especially with the actual title to umbrella all of the songs, I want it to feel like we could just keep it moving, keep it going. Nothing is too big to handle. And I think that’s so needed in your 20s to understand that it’s going to be okay…And I just love Keep It Peachy almost like as a saying too. 

What has it been like to see fans get their hands on these songs live on tour with Ashley Kutcher?

I would say the reaction has been better than I could ever imagine. Feeling so grateful. I think everybody has just welcomed me with open arms and the songs, I feel that’s obviously probably also a credit to Ashley and the fan base that she has created. She’s a very diaristic songwriter too. And so I think the people that are coming to watch her if they don’t know who I am, really love those types of songs that tell stories also. So it’s been amazing, that response. But also I didn’t know how many people would be coming down to see me or people that would know my songs at the shows, and it’s just been so amazing. For me, being an English girl halfway across the world, these are my first U.S. shows, to have at least half the room singing my songs back to me has been so amazing because I’m like, “wait, what do you mean I’m in the middle of Nebraska and you were singing my lyrics.” So it’s been very amazing. 

What are fans like for you in the U.S. versus the UK?

I’m so amazed with how friendly everybody is. I’m not saying that English people aren’t friendly. We definitely can be a little bit more reserved, but just the girls as well. The girls have been so forthcoming and lovely. And we’ve been chatting after every show just going and meeting as many people [as possible]. So I would say that my biggest takeaway outside of just the difference between touring is how much time in the car I thought I would handle it and I don’t know whether I did. My whole country chopped top to bottom is what I’m doing in a day here. I feel very resilient. I don’t know whether I am. I need to get my road legs. 

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What was it like growing up in the UK? Was your family musical or was it just you that caught the music bug?

So I was raised in a very musical family. My granddad was a rock and roll session musician his whole life and he used to play with my dad…that’s how my parents met. And so really just from the youngest age, there was always a music room full of every instrument in there and I was plopped on stage with them. And so I really just had that bug in me from as young as I can remember. And I think when you have that inside of you to want to perform and want to play, it’s really hard to replicate that feeling anywhere else than to just go out on stage and perform it or write music. So yeah, I got my dad to teach me chords on the guitar and piano at nine or something. And then I started dabbling in songwriting from then. That was a huge incentive for me to want to learn to play.

What lessons did you learn from watching your family members like your granddad work as a musician?

I would say that especially because he wasn’t the artist himself and especially that era of music, rock and roll and old country like that, people were really in it for the music specifically. There was such a soul and a feel to all of that music and there wasn’t social media or the way that the industry is now and the way that it’s like you’re more so a brand more than anything else. People were just musicians for the feel and the song and in it for the music themselves. And so I would love to think that just being around that, I vicariously took on that really deep love and awe and respect for just music and the way that it makes you feel. And I hold that really close to my heart because I can really feel that when I’m writing and when I’m performing, but I still really have that in my roots and that’s exactly my why, which really helps to be centered as to why you’re doing it and what it’s all for. 

Having trained as a classical soprano for over 10 years, how did that education and background shape how you perform and record music today? 

I will say it’s largely different how you use your voice in classical soprano singing and chapel choir versus country pop. However, I luckily have pretty good vocal health. When I’m in the studio back to back or I’m on tours or whatever it is and I’m using my voice so much, I typically won’t lose it or won’t strain it because I think it was trained like an athlete’s voice for so long. So I think that that’s put me in really good stead because I can just, I’m not saying I’m technically the most amazing singer in the world by any means, but I know what to push and what not to.

When did country music particularly come into your life and why have you decided to lean into that genre?

Well, I was raised on a lot of rock and roll music, and then also subsequently a lot of country music. The first song I ever played on a guitar was “Johnny Be Good.” And that’s obviously, it’s not super country, but it has all those veins going through it. And so I honestly, truly, when I learned to sing, I had that little twang to my voice anyway, just because that was the only music I was around. And so I don’t know, people now are so confused as to why my voice sounds like it does singing versus talking. And I genuinely don’t think I could sing any other way because that’s just how I had always sang when it came to writing. And I think we didn’t have much country music, especially as a teenager. I was the only one in my school year, for example, that would be listening to country. It wasn’t a thing then 10 years ago. But I think blending my rock and roll background with, I was so obsessed with Hannah Montana as a kid, blending all those things, even Taylor Swift. Huge fan of Taylor Swift when I was growing up and I loved all those stories. And so I think my love for country music really came from, on that soul feel that I had growing up from my granddad. And then two, lyrics and stories are just so important to me. And so I just feel so at home writing those types of songs. 

How do you feel about making your CMA Fest debut next week?

I couldn’t be more excited for me to perform, but also to see everybody else perform. I’ve done a bunch of festivals in the UK, but I just don’t think there is anywhere in the world, any city that has something like CMA where it’s like back-to-back artists, stages everywhere, everybody turns up. I can’t wait to give my experience after because I’ve never even attended one. This is my first one in every way. So I’m just so excited. I think it’s just so special that the whole city comes together for music. There’s just nowhere else like that in the world. 

Fans can keep up with Bellah Mae on Instagram.