Bellah Mae is a rising country singer/songwriter who hails from Solihull in Birmingham, UK. Signed to Island/EMI Records, Mae is making waves within the UK country music scene and it hopefully won’t be long before we see her added to the line up of some of the UK’s biggest country festivals. Relatable lyrics with pop infused melodies, Bellah Mae’s music has resonated with many which has seen her go viral on TikTok, receive streams of over a 100K, play two sold out UK tours and have a co-sign from Tate McRae.

Last week, Mae released her current single Bad Day To Be My Ex. Written in Nashville by Bellah, Brigetta Truitt, and produced by Brett Truitt, the Pop, R&B infused track is fun, uplifting and incredibly catchy. The relatable lyrics help inspire confidence and to care less about the things that bother us.

We caught up with Bellah to discuss the new single, her writing, her admiration for Pamela Anderson, Dolly Parton and Hannah Montana and more!

Hello Bellah, how are you ? How has your week?

So I had a song come out last Friday (Bad Day To Be My Ex), so I still feel like I’m riding that high, the release. It’s such a fun time to drop a song. I mean, there’s a lot of emotions that will be going around dropping a song, but I definitely still feel like I’m in that little bubble of, really, the first week. I’m looking at what the next move is, I feel like that’s very, like, typical of whenever you’ve just done one thing, what’s the next thing? So that’s kind of been my first few days of the week, just hitting the ground running.

Yes, well congratulations on the release of ‘Bad Day To Be My Ex’ – how have the reactions been?

I feel like I’m lucky that I have like, a very leaned in fan base, so it’s well received. I think people have really resonated with it, which is always just so nice.

That’s good and it’s nice, I am sure, to have people resonate with your music. I know it’s important for you to write about your experiences and not be afraid to say what’s on your mind. And I think that’s important too, especially as women, we’re often told to not do that, to not say what we’re thinking, you know, be silent, otherwise you’re complaining too much, you know?

Yeah, I think especially because this song is, like, probably my most confident song that I’ve released. I’ve definitely not, been shy of releasing sassy songs or, you know, things that probably my exes would hear and be like, “Oh” but this song, what I really felt was it’s about me more so than them, which was the first time I’ve really done that. And actually, it’s definitely not the first time I’ve tried to express those kind of feelings, but it’s the first time I felt like I could articulate how I was feeling in a way that I didn’t mind if, like, somebody heard it and was like, “Oh, that’s very confident”. Because sometimes I do think that you have to just almost tiptoe a little bit over that line of what you feel like is like, you know, a healthy amount of confidence. I’m writing a song, you know, I’m really dialing up those emotions so that it gets across with people, I want them to feel confident when they’re hearing it too. And that’s something that I kept in the forefront of my mind when I was writing this song. I think this could also be good for other women too.

Well, I agree, and I think that’s the important thing. We listeners want to find something that we can relate to. It’s therapy, really, isn’t it? so it’s nice for young girls when they don’t have a lot to turn to, when they’ve got, obviously, such issues with media, social media and everything, to find someone like yourself and go, “Okay, I’m not alone here”.

Yeah and I, of course, talk a lot about breakups in my songs. I think a lot of us go through things like that, obviously. So it’s like a common ground for me to tap into. And then I write, obviously, a lot for girls. I feel very lucky that I have a very female fanbase.

Yeah, and I love the fact, I assume this gets asked a lot, but about the Pamela Anderson reference, because, you know, I grew up knowing her quite well in terms of her work, and how she wasn’t taken seriously. It’s been nice to see the turn around of nasty press when she was in Baywatch to seeing them love her now, seeing her be Golden Globe nominated and not wear any makeup and still be seen as the most beautiful woman in the world. And I love that.

Yeah, I think she’s just a real icon, and I’ve always really respected her. I truly have a lot of respect for all women, and especially women in the entertainment, non-music and the music industry, because there’s so much pressure to be attractive. So then there’s so much pressure to not be too attractive, it’s the weirdest line to actually walk. And it’s actually impossible to get right- you’re either too one way or to the other, too confident, not confident enough. People like Pamela and also like Dolly Parton, they were unapologetically confident, they played, like the media at their own games in such a smart and just beautiful way. It’s definitely something I would have taken inspiration from, whether I realized it or not. And then when I was writing this song, I really felt like I wanted to put a very obvious reference like that in there. That’s like, kind of a real stylistic thing of my songwriting anyway, within my lyrics is that I love to see, like hyper specific on references and visual within the lyrics.

I love that you brought up Dolly Parton too, because I don’t think there’s anybody in the world that would dare outsmart or outwit her.

She’s really the smartest woman ever every time I’ve ever seen an interview with her. What I love is the way that she actually says what she says. She’ll say something, but the way that she says it is so like soft and just like girly, but she’s saying something really articulate, and I just love the balance that she has there. I feel like I saw a lot of myself, or definitely a lot of like, like an aspirational figure to be that way.

Another person who wasn’t taken seriously and is starting to get the recognition they deserve and , I know that you grew up listening to, is of course, Miley Cyrus. I love Hannah Montana. I was a little bit too old for it, but I’m not gonna lie, I did love it. So I have to ask what is it about the show that you love because, of course, it’s very country music influenced, especially the film.

Firstly, I was raised on a lot of country music. Like, I’m around a lot of country music. My Grandad was a session musician. My early childhood was around very southern type of stuff. When I learned to play guitar, I learned, like a three, four chord blues. It was the first thing I learned to play, I was an English girl born in the 2000s, there wasn’t a lot of country (mainstream). It’s still only like just breaking through the English market now. Then also, I have always had this absolutely delusional dream and belief that I was going to be a pop star. Like, I say delusional because even from a young age, I would like do performances all around my house and make my family watch. And I would be like, tapping their hands as if they were like, front row at the stage. Hannah Montana was like, that’s me. I’m gonna be that girl. I just literally, I felt like I was her. That’s so magical, like, that’s such a magical feeling. I don’t think I’ll ever have that feeling again, other than when I actually am on stage doing it myself, it makes me feel like seven/ eight years old again, and sometimes, honestly, when I get stressed from the music industry, I just remind myself that, like every single thing I do is to that eight year old version of myself watching Hannah Montana. I’m like, that’s gonna be me.

Do you feel you have the best of both worlds? Haha

Ha I do, look at me right now. I’m on Oxford Street with a Latte. No one knows. No one here around me knows.

And I have to ask, Do you know the Hoedown throwdown?

Yes, it’s like a right of passage.

What was it like being a country fan around your friends and that, were they fans?

No, the more I think about it, all during my teenage years, definitely credit to again, Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana, Dolly, but I was the only person listening to country, and it didn’t go down well with my friends. Now I have a lot more friends that are into country, which is amazing.

It’s funny, isn’t it? I mean, just yesterday, I drove past someone listening to Zac Brown Band, and I go into a shop and they’re playing country radio. This didn’t happen 10 years ago.

Honestly, even within the fact like the last 18 months, I would say it’s really come through. I do think that potentially a reason why is the emphasis on lyrics more so than they have ever been. You know with Tik Tok as well, country songs are constantly going viral because the lyrics are so amazing. Storytelling is so amazing that people can’t help but resonate to it, because they’re just talking about real life stories. We all go through such similar things, so I think people have really started to fall in love with like lyricism, even as Gracie Abrams, she’s pop but the lyrics are unbelievable and that’s almost like a country format of a song.

Tell us about the some of the music you’ve got soon to be released, because, you know, I believe that you say you’ve grown as a person, but how has that reflected in your songwriting?

I think there’s always very similar themes within my music. I held my hands up from day one, and I’ve always said I’m very emotional, I feel everything so deeply. My family always, you know, teased me for it, because if there’s anything going through my life, you’re gonna know about it. I’m very like, pull out of my sleeve. I would say the progression throughout making this record and writing this is I genuinely feel like I have developed so much as an individual. Going through my early 20s, I feel the most confident that I’ve ever felt in my life, which I do think that is natural. Going through your 20s, you get older, you also care less about certain things and care more about things that you decide are important to you. I feel very happy that one of the things I’ve decided is important to me is really focusing on myself and having the confidence in myself that I don’t mind who comes and goes as much anymore, which has been a huge, like turning point for me. I think that a lot of the previous records were coming from kind of sad places. They were very much based on what they thought of me, whereas this is more what I think of them, which is so, such an amazing, fun thing to have in your head where you actually don’t think, like, “Well, why don’t they want to be with me?” And you’re like, well, actually, “why would I want to be with you?”

That’s a great way of thinking. I always say to people, the people who don’t like you, do you really like them? They say, no, and I’m like, then don’t worry about it

Exactly and most people don’t even like themselves. I had to really focus on loving me and loving who I was. I think that that really comes across in the confidence of these new songs, which I’m so excited to put out, especially because I do have such a female audience, I feel like we’re growing up together with that.

Who have you worked with on these collection of songs? Because you’ve been out in Nashville, haven’t you, and you’ve been recording and writing out there.

Yeah, I have an amazing team of two people Brigetta and Brett Truitt, and they are brother and sister. We wrote a song last year, and it was called Hell & Never Back, and ended up being the next single. I went back out to Nashville later in the year and started writing with them more, and then we ended up writing the next single after that, which was See You Later. We just had this track record of, like, we just really had a synergy. I get very overwhelmed when I’m writing songs with new people, because it is the most unique experience where you go into a room of people you don’t know a lot of the time, and you’re blurring out your heart. You would never usually do that for somebody who you just met, and then you’re going into all these things while trying to make something I’m really proud of, and I just really had this synergy and trust with them. So yeah, for Brigetta and Brett, they are amazing.

Did you get involved in the production at all?

Yeah. So I actually think the best thing for me is that I don’t know how to produce, but I have so many ideas. So it’s so fun for me, because I’m like, “I want to do something like this”, and I’ll be making this crazy sound with my mouth, like, you know, and it sounds a bit like this. And they’re like, really trying to understand what I mean. But I always started to try and get it across and then Brett brings it to life. And then that is like magic to me. So I would say I’m very heavily involved in production notes, but the magic is that I don’t know how to do it, so I’m like, Oh, wow that’s exactly what was in my marketing script.

I was going to ask if any of the song, whether released or not, sound completely different from the writers room to full production, where you’re like, Wow. I did not know that song could sound like that.

Yeah, especially because I write the majority of stuff – like it starts as me with some chords, because I play guitar and piano, so I’m in my house a lot of the time, just writing on my own. And then I’ll take something in, and then we really flesh it out into something that’s goes into the pop style that you end up hearing

Who do you play new music to first? To get that dead honest opinion?

My manager. It definitely goes straight to my manager. She’s the first person to hear it, and she is unbelievable, but she definitely will never give me like a yes if it’s not a yes, and then probably my sister, my little sister, Fifi, she’s incredibly hard to please as well. I really love to have an honest opinion, because then if I get a yes. I’m like, Okay, fantastic. And I’m so hard on myself and the songs I write. It’s unbelievable the amount of songs that I go through, and I’m like, no, no. So having people around me that I trust who are gonna be like, Yeah, I like it.

Whose lyrics have helped you when you’re feeling down or alone?

Um, I actually, I’ve loved Sabrina Carpenter for a long time, her older albums. Like ‘Emails I Can’t Send’. I mean that as a song, but as an album, there’s a song on there called ‘decode’, and I remember, yeah, really, really listening to that.

When you are putting a project together with a track listing are the bookends important to you?

Yes, yes, I do like it to tell a story as we go throughout. And sometimes I feel like it’s quite a natural choice. Honestly, I think you can kind of just visualize it, and think that makes sense to go there, because you don’t want to be going from Bad Day To Be My Ex to maybe one of my more, like softer, like introspective records. You just kind of want it to, like, have taken a natural flow of feeling.

I often ask the artists about the first song they’ve ever written, but I have read what yours was about a tree swing that your dad made, and you’ve also said that you don’t want your songs from the early days to be heard. But would you ever consider going back and revisiting any of those songs and rejigging them slightly. Are there any that you think, “you know what? If I worked on it a little bit more, I would like to get that out there?”

Yeah, I actually think we’re doing that right now. There’s a couple of songs that were written a while ago, really, truly, a while ago, that I’ve just always had a special place in my heart for but they don’t make sense at the moment. So we are, I’m actually in the studio next week reworking a song which is so interesting that you said that. So if that ends up being on the track list, that will be so interesting that we’ve spoken about that

You will have to let me know which one it is when it comes out so I know which one to look for. I love that there must be songs out there. I always think artists must have songs that they may not like, but there’s parts of them that they do like and then maybe save that part of that song and make it into another one.

I think there’s also a real argument for what’s new, but the newest song that you have written, it’s almost always your favorite, because it’s new. As an artist, I’ve had a lot of the songs for a while before they came out, and then I’m teasing them for four weeks relentlessly on socials so by the time it comes out, I’m like, I could honestly have a break from this song even though it’s only just gone out into the world. So yeah, like, there’s so many songs that are just sat in my Dropbox that I loved at the time, and then I’ve listened to them so many times that I’m like, Oh, maybe I want something new now, but at the time, it really captured that, that feeling and that emotion, and maybe that would be perfect for somebody else, or maybe widely like love.

I remember Natalie Hemby said she wrote a song with Labrinth (Jealous). A few years later when she had a call saying he wanted to release it she was like, “What song are you on about?” Because it had been so long.

Honestly, you forget the songs that you’ve written, because you have written so many. As creatives, you just want to keep going and keep going. And sometimes it is really interesting to go back and be like, hang on. This was, this was good?

Bellah Mae’s new single Bad Day To Be My Ex is out now and available here