brittney spencer
BRITTNEY SPENCER WAS HIGH and chilling at home in Nashville the night her life changed. She had posted an acoustic cover of “Crowded Table,” a song of radical inclusion by the supergroup the Highwomen, after seeing them sing it on TV. “I remember feeling so warm inside watching it,” she says. The group retweeted her video, and things began to accelerate at a rapid pace. Soon, Spencer was touring with artists like Jason Isbell and Chris Stapleton, then making appearances on the CMA Awards and ACM Awards. Now, she’s breaking new ground in a part of the music industry that has not historically or even recently made space for Black women.
Spencer grew up in Baltimore and fell hard for country music after hearing the Chicks as a teenager. After a period of time singing backup for gospel and R&B groups around her hometown, she came to Nashville as a 25-year-old who’d just lost her job and felt like she needed to be in town to win. That’s one thing she learned from the Reba McEntire and Taylor Swift documentaries she had watched. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” she says now. “I actually still don’t know what I’m doing.”
Her early years in Nashville were filled with trial and error, and she had trouble getting anyone in the industry to meet with her. It was Highwomen member Maren Morris’ debut album, Hero, that helped Spencer through a tough period when she wanted to give up. “Here’s this woman who knows how to write, and also she can sing her ass off,” she says. “I listened to that album over and over again for weeks until I talked myself off the ledge of stopping.”
Spencer writes about relationships with great understanding, but she’s also capable of writing a gutsy protest song like “Thoughts and Prayers,” and she hopes her success will make things better for the artists coming down the line behind her.
Her unerring honesty and empathy are a big part of what makes her music so appealing. “Me being vulnerable is inviting,” she says. “I’m not skinny, I’m not the girl people pick — I never have been. But I make people feel at least a little safe. I’m starting to learn how sacred that is.”