Tenille Arts Talks Upcoming Bachelor Performance, Songwriting for New Album

Tenille Arts has made a name for herself in recent years and has the reality television world to thank for part of that journey.

After releasing her debut self-titled album in 2016 and follow up, Rebel Child, in 2017, Arts began to collect a following in the country scene. In 2018, she was given a chance to appear on The Bachelor and performed a track called “Moment on Weakness” during an intimidate dating scenes. This caught the attention of Reviver Records who went on to sign the budding star. Arts went back the following year to perform “I Hate This” on the show and, is gearing up to make another appearance on the popular dating franchise. “On January 6^th, I will be performing my new single “Somebody Like That.”

“It’s the premiere of the show so millions of people watch and I’m so excited about that,” Arts tells American Songwriter.

The track is the lead single off her upcoming album, Love, Heartbreak and Everything in Between, which, per Arts, is a themed album that follows her life trajectory of the past year. “The first four songs are love songs, the next four are breakup songs, and then the last four are everything in between,” she explains, noting that in a short period of time, she went through a breakup, became reacquainted with life on her own, and then found new love.

The album drops January 10^th and features an array of songwriter collaborations, many of which are new for the singer this time around. “I’m really excited about this project. I got to work with a ton of different writers and producers and really push past my own comfort zone,” she says.

In the past, Arts admits to having gotten comfortable writing with a select few people. She wanted some fresh voices on this project and had her team set her up with writing sessions with an array of talent, including: Allison Margaret Cruz, Whitney Duncan, James Slater, Alex Kline, Derek George, Josh Logan, Palmer Lee, Lizzy McAvoy, Grand Vogelfanger, Adam Wheeler, and Matt Rovey. She went into the sessions with the mentality of “I’m not putting any boundaries on the writing process and if I like what we come out with, I’m going to try to make it work on the album,” she recalls.

The process of adding in fresh blood helped to catapult Arts into a high level of artistry, she explains. She also had less songwriting sessions than usual, which she found as motivation to really work to produce something special during each scheduled co-write. “This year I’ve been on the road so much, so I would maybe have one or two a week if I was in Nashville for a couple of days,” says Arts, who admits that this helped her not to get burned out and to be able to come to the writing sessions feeling creatively rested and armed with ideas. “I found that worked really well for me. Instead of writing, six times a week, I got to really just focus on a couple of writing sessions and make them really good,” she says. 

A track she’s particularly proud of off the forthcoming project is “Nothing to See Here,” which was released alongside the album announcement. “I wrote that song with Whitney Duncan and it’s about going through a breakup and going back to your hometown. I’m seeing all of these memories and the place where that guy said that he loves me for the first time and the place that we’ve met. And it was almost like a movie in my mind,” she explains, noting that she and Duncan vibed extremely well. “Everybody Knows Everybody,” was co-written with Alex Klein and Allison Margaret Cruz, a duo that contributed to several additional tracks on the project. “It’s about going out, having fun at the bar; but it’s a small town bar so there’s only one place to go and everybody knows everybody’s business, which is something that I have experienced with my hometown,” Arts says.

And then there are several tracks that Arts wrote by herself that made the final cut, “Another Life” and “Right Guy Wrong Time.” “For “Another Life,” I’d just gone through a breakup. I sat down at the piano, which I also never do — I usually write on guitar — and I started telling a story about my breakup and how I felt at the time,” she says. And then “Right Guy Wrong Time,” came together after Arts came home from a bad date. “I wrote down this song and 30 minutes!” she proclaims. This, per the artist, is the first time something she wrote solo made it onto an album. “I typically kind of come up with an idea or a concept and then take it into a writing session. But these two songs just fell out so quickly that I didn’t even feel the need to bring them to anybody else. It was great to be able to do that this time!” she proclaims.