Emily Shackelton moved to Nashville 16 years ago to pursue a songwriting career. While her catalog includes songs recorded by Reba McEntire, Sara Evans, Mickey Guyton, Lauren Alaina and Cassadee Pope, it wasn’t until Shackelton’s tenth year in Music City that she garnered her first No. 1 hit with Carly Pearce’s “Every Little Thing” in 2017.
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In addition to another chart-topper with Pearce’s “What He Didn’t Do,” Shackelton has started to release her own music over the past two years. She also made her Ryman Auditorium performance debut during the 16th annual ACM Honors in August.
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“I’ve slowly been trying to get braver and embracing that we’re all artists and songwriters,” Shackelton tells American Songwriter. “It’s OK to share my stories as well as other people’s and try to shine a light for people and help people through that. I feel like God has always written my story so much better than I could. All of these experiences I’m so grateful for.”
Below, Shackelton shares her songwriting journey, where she finds song inspiration and advice in American Songwriter’s The Writer’s Block Q&A.
American Songwriter: How did you get started? Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?
Emily Shackelton: Yeah, I do. I’ve sang and made up songs my whole life. It’s called “He Is Everything.” It was a little praise song for God. I grew up in a town with 900 people in the middle of nowhere in northern Minnesota. My dad was the wedding singer, the everything singer for people’s wedding ceremonies, for funerals, for churches, anything. He started bringing me with him pretty early on. By the age of seven or eight, I was singing duets with him for weddings and things.
Then I got the opportunity to perform on A Prairie Home Companion, which was a long-running radio show on NPR that featured folk music and Americana acts. I was nine the first time that I performed on it [during] a contest for talent from towns under 2,000 [people]. I won that year and he had me back a few different times after that to perform so that was my start.
AS: When do you feel like you arrived as a songwriter?
ES: There were always little breadcrumbs along the way that kept me going. When I was leaving Berklee [School of Music], I entered the BMI John Lennon songwriting competition, and I won that year. So when I moved to Nashville, there was a door open for me at BMI to meet with a rep there, who in turn, took me around and introduced me to some different publishers. I started getting co-writes out of that and playing some open mic nights and about 10 months into my time in Nashville, I entered my song again into the American Idol songwriting contest and David Cook ended up singing it on the finale of American Idol. I was able to sign my first publishing deal 11 months into my time in Nashville, which is such a gift, and I’ve been writing for publishers ever since.
But, I never felt like I arrived. I would get little cuts here and there. I had five different songs featured on the Nashville [television] show, which was really neat. My first song on the radio was with Cassadee Pope and then I had a song on the radio with Lauren Alaina [‘Doin’ Fine’] and that one was maybe Top 20. Then year 10–they call it a ten-year town and wouldn’t you know how average I am–it was year 10 when “Every Little Thing” went No. 1.
AS: Can you feel when a song is going to be a hit?
ES: When I moved to town, not only was it a barren desert for women artists, but also for ballads. So when I walked into the room that day, we’d already written a bunch of songs aiming for Carly’s record, and most of them were faster and what we thought radio wanted. I walked in that day and Carly had her little sneaky laugh that she has sometimes, and she’s like, “I want to write a ballad today.” We all laughed because it felt like the kiss of death for any chance at a single and in this day, a single is the only way to make money as a songwriter. We make nothing on streaming or YouTube or album cuts anymore.
We loved the song that had poured out in about 30 minutes. It felt special and it was an earworm, got stuck in our heads right away. They recorded it pretty soon after that, a demo version, her and busbee [since busbee] was the one producing the record [“Every Little Thing”]. I felt confident at that point that it might make the record, but never in my wildest dreams would have thought that it would be a single and that it would be the first single launching her career. … It was this small little ballad in a sea of big raucous songs and somehow it cuts through. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that that would be how I got my first No. 1.
AS: What inspires you as a writer? How do you find ideas for a song?
ES: I’m a mom first and foremost. I have two kids, Benjamin’s eight and Ruby’s five and that’s my full-time job. There’s a lot of inspiration in not working in songwriting all the time, and living life. The more present I am, in whatever I’m doing, the more inspiration I can take from it. Listening, being around friends, reading, reading is a big one for me. Lots of ways trying to keep my ears open and my heart open really.
AS: What’s your advice to songwriters starting out?
ES: Definitely just showing up and keep on showing up. Some of the most talented friends that I had when I moved to town that I was sure were going to be superstars moved away after a few years because this town will break your heart and then it will break it again 15 more times. It is not for the faint of heart and talent really is what gets you in the door and after that has a lot more to do with grit and sticking around and just building and trusting that you’re building something that is going to come to fruition. And produce fruit in the right season, even though we’re really pouring into something that we’re not going to see output from probably for many years. There’s always exceptions to that rule, of course, but I’m the average. It’s not easy to be told no over and over and over again.
AS: What song of yours do you want to be remembered by?
ES: The personal song that will be my song forever and that I hope that I will have played at my funeral maybe at this point—I know that’s dark—is a song called “Our God Sustains.” I just released it. I wrote it after my husband had a terrible accident that he’s recovered from and it was the last song that I wrote before busbee passed away. It happened during a really really dark season and I carry that with me always.
AS: Is there one lyric in that song that has changed in meaning from the day you wrote it?
ES: Even when I fall it’s into grace.
AS: Where did that lyric come from when you were writing it?
ES: My husband was in a terrible skydiving accident so honestly, it came from a very literal place at the time. The idea of falling and we both had this image in our minds after his accident … he fell into God’s hands and God really actually placed him and caught him because he should have died. It was very literal at that time and now it’s just become a very personal reminder. It’s every day. It’s never running out. It’s always there—there is a never-ending supply of grace. So that’s what that means to me now.
AS: What do you love most about songwriting?
ES: It feels like the most naturally, fully myself that I ever feel. The most flow state, the most joy, outside of my children of course. It’s my passion.
(Photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for ACM)
