Tenille Townes’ Next Musical Chapter Will Focus on ‘The Way the Light Gets Through the Cracks’

If you’ve watched Tenille Townes new music video for her new single, “Girl Who Didn’t Care,” you’ve likely noticed the starring actors — inspirational women Alyssa Carson, Sarah Fuller and Shannon Wells — along with the adorable little girls who play their younger versions. But there’s one detail that might not be so obvious: In the scenes that show Townes performing, she’s playing a dark wooden acoustic guitar with a pattern of white stripes on it in the shape of a sunrise over a horizon.

That subtle detail is more than just a stylistic choice, Townes revealed during a recent interview with Country Now and other outlets. It’s also a hint at the next batch of music she’s got in the works.

“I love getting to tattoo the guitars to get to represent the new collections that I see down the road,” the singer explains. “And it felt like painting a sunrise on a new horizon on this brand new guitar was a good place to start.”

She goes on to say that she’s been “writing a bunch” during the past year or so, and that much of the material she’s been coming up with fits under the theme of optimism and finding hope in dark spaces.

“It feels like a lot of these new songs feel connected by a thread of the way the light gets in through the cracks,” Townes says. “I’ve been think a lot about that in this creative season.”

She’s also been noticing a shift in the way she chooses to write her songs, too. Some of Townes’ best-loved songs to date, like “Somebody’s Daughter” and “Jersey on the Wall,” are story songs with fly-on-the-wall narrative structures. “My favorite place to write music from is from the observer perspective. I love to be the storyteller. I love to zoom out and write a song from a bird’s eye view, a little bit,” she notes.

“But I think this past year has really challenged me and pushed me in that creative process,” Townes continues. “It feels like the songs are coming out a lot more personal, this time around.”

Though that’s outside of her comfort zone, she ultimately thinks that shows growth and promise for the musical chapter ahead. “I think [the songs] have brought a little bit more healing to me in that way, sharing some things that I’ve been thinking about and things that have been going on in my own heart.”

Still, just like her last album, The Lemonade Stand, Townes hopes her next project will inspire listeners to find their own stories in her songs. “I hope this whole chapter of music feels like an invitation,” she reflects.