2024 is a milestone year for cowgirl country singer Jenna Paulette – she signed a record deal with Leo33, had a baby girl with her new husband, and released her sophomore album, HORSEBACK.
She rebuilt her life. Paulette was previously married to a suppressive man who told her that she would never survive without him. Now, she’s thriving.
“The most gratifying feeling was being able to pay my own bills and see myself succeed on the other side of all of that,” she said. “He was like, ‘The second you walk away is the second that everything will go bad for you.’ And it was the total opposite. I’m obviously in a much better situation, and with the love of my life and having a baby.”
The album’s title track, “Horseback,” encompasses both versions of herself. The hook is, “You ain’t getting that horse back. She said it represents the bridge between the girl she was and the woman she is now.
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“I was like, ‘I’m never going back ever to the girl that was cooped up,” she said. “I will forever be exactly who I am, and I’m not going to let any fence hold me in. Whether it was a bad relationship or feeling like I had to live in Nashville to be successful, I think I’ve gained a lot of good from just being like, ‘You know what? This is me.’”
Jenna Paulette: “HORSEBACK” Is The Bridge Between Her Old and New Selves
Unlike many of her contemporaries, Paulette lives primarily in Texas and works cattle on a ranch when she isn’t on stage. Her lifestyle directly impacts the songs she writes. She creates with intention from her unique point of view, that she’s cultivated through living her life the way she wants to.
“I wrote ‘HORSEBACK’ from the perspective of getting away from anything that would try and fence me in,” she said. “I want to be around all of the people and things that make my perspective what it is.”
Her song “3 Kings” is a collection of perspectives from the people she loves and the life she’s living. She wrote “Prairie Primrose” on horseback, and she herded bulls through a pasture toward a gate.
“I was kind of going slow and just making sure everything was moving in the right direction,” she said. “The chorus was playing over and over again in my head.”
The ride was between spring and summer in 2023 when Texas’ flowering plants were starting to bloom.
Lyrics include: Prairie Primrose, Prairie Primrose| You don’t worry about nothin’ | Prettiest thing, ain’t a care in the world
“Being able to write saddle songs from the saddle and then having them actually end up on a record, I’m like, ‘Gosh, this was the dream all alone,’” Paulette said. “I have to be on a horse out in the middle of nowhere to make the rest of what I do makes sense. I think there’s a difference between going to write a song from 11 to 3 every day and just having an idea and hoping the song turns out good and could be a hit.”
Paulette co-wrote eight of the 13 songs on the album. Ashley McBryde, Matraca Berg, and Lori McKenna penned “The Prophet (Granddaddy’s Song),” one of her favorites. An A&R rep pitched Paulette the song and suggested she change a few details to make it reflect her grandfather. She was hesitant because she didn’t want to offend the writers. The rep told her to make a work tape reflecting the changes and send it back to him.
“I didn’t do any surgical work on it,” she said. “I literally just inserted very, very specific things about my grandfather into the lyric and melody and structure that was already all there. It takes great A&R to find songs like that and to build a project that feels hopefully not like a normal sophomore album where it just feels like an incomplete piece of work. And this one feels complete.”
She said the most significant difference between her debut album and HORSEBACK is her ability to be honest.
“I think there are some songs on that record where I was just trying to find the best song I could write versus writing from my actual honest perspective,” she said. After I started living some of that honesty, there was so much backbone to that project. I feel like HORSEBACK is an extension of all of that.”
(Photo by Omar Vega/WireImage)
‘HORSEBACK‘ tracklisting (songwriters in parentheses):
- Wild Is Her Favorite Color (Lori McKenna, Liz Rose, Hillary Lindsey)
- 3 Kings (Jenna Paulette, Parker Welling, Casey Brown)
- The Devil Is An Angel (Jenna Paulette, Parker Welling, Casey Brown)
- Run The Damn Ball (Rodney Clawson, Casey Beathard, Hunter Phelps)
- The Dirt (Jenna Paulette, Will Bundy, Hillary Lindsey)
- Chasin’ Whiskey (Joe Fox, Tony Lane)
- The Prophet (Granddaddy’s Song) (Ashley McBryde, Matraca Berg, Lori McKenna)
- Outside (Kelley Lovelace, Ashley Gorley, Dallas Davidson)
- Prairie Primrose (Jenna Paulette, Will Bundy, Lydia Vaughan)
- Darlin’ (Jenna Paulette, Jess Cayne, Matthew Morrisey)
- Horseback (Jenna Paulette, Will Bundy, Lydia Vaughan)
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