Tenille Arts has spent the past several years quietly building one of the most consistent and respected careers in modern country music. Since first arriving in London in October 2019 for Country Music Week, anchored by a standout performance at Bush Hall, the Saskatchewan native has become a familiar and welcome presence across the UK and Europe, returning regularly for headline tours and major festival appearances. A multi-platinum selling artist and one of Canada’s most prominent female voices of the past decade, Arts has released four acclaimed studio albums to date, from her 2017 debut ‘Rebel Child' through to her most recent record ‘To Be Honest' in May 2024. As a new chapter begins to unfold, she is already looking ahead, having shared ‘Don’t Ruin Flowers' late last year as the first taste of her forthcoming fifth studio album.
Born and raised in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Arts began writing songs in her early teens before gaining early traction online in 2009, when her cover of Taylor Swift’s ‘Fifteen' caught the attention of Nashville industry figures. After completing high school, she moved to Nashville full-time in 2015, signing a publishing deal and releasing early material including the charity single ‘Breathe.' Her career accelerated with the release of her debut EP in 2016 and ‘Rebel Child' the following year, before appearances on The Bachelor in 2018 and 2020 brought her to a wider audience and led to a deal with Reviver Records. Her breakthrough single ‘Somebody Like That' made history as the first country number one written, produced and performed entirely by women, earning double platinum status and cementing her place as a powerful modern voice in the genre. We caught up with Tenille recently to talk all about her new music and more.
Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today Tenille and happy new year! Did you have a restful and relaxing Christmas?
You know what? I would say yes and it was all fun but my sister has three little kids and we were all in the house together! (laughing) It was a lot. It was great to have that excitement around Christmas but it was a lot! Lots of holding the baby whilst the other kids were screaming! I like to be a fun aunt but I did have to say that auntie's room was out of bounds to all those sticky fingers!
What a great song ‘Don't Ruin Flowers' is – I think it's going to do great things for you this year.
Thank you. I was still writing some break up songs and kinda thought that I was done towards the end of last year. I was reflecting on the relationship and thinking about how flowers were such a positive thing in that relationship and a very exciting thing at the beginning which turned into apology flowers and I really didn't like that. I was in the writing room with Lydia Sutherland and Ryan Kohn and we were just talking about. I was talking about how I'd seen one girl on social media saying that apology flowers were just a constant reminder of failure just sitting there.
I took the idea to Lydia and Ryan…… funnily enough Lydia's mom has a flower shop up in Canada and it felt like it was meant to be. I sent a lot of songs to my team last year and that was the one that kept coming back up in conversation.
It's such a powerful, dramatic yet understated ballad. I think it will do wonderful things for you.
Thank you – I was hoping it would come across that way. Vulnerable and something that I hadn't heard of addressed before in a song.
If someone was to buy you a bunch of flowers – what would your favourite flowers be?
Oh my goodness. I would probably day daisies. I love a good wildflower, something just a little different so daisies would probably be my pick.
You recently signed with ONErpm who are a very modern label and distribution provider. Why did you choose them and what do you think they are going to do for your career going forward?
You said it right there. They are very new and modern and fresh. The company, as a whole, I've seen do a lot in other spaces and in the Country world I feel like they would fit in with my outlook. We've always been very independent – I've never done a major label and that was by design because I wanted to retain more control than majors afford you sometimes. This felt like it was the right move for my next chapter and the new music. They've been really amazing so far: we are only a few months in and I love everybody on the team.
You have a history of putting out full albums rather than EPs and multiple singles, which I really like. ‘to be honest' came out in May 2024 so it's been a while now – reflecting on that album, what are you most proud of about ‘to be honest' now that you have had some space and time to live with it?
I think for that album it was the overall concept of ‘to be honest.' I talked about a lot of different things on that album. I wrote it all before going through a break up but it was full of all break up songs, which is weird to look back on! Was I almost creating what would go on to happen to me? (laughing) It became almost a little too close to what I was going through and I was, like, ‘damn, I didn't even have a moment to process things before I was out there singing those songs.'
I have a feeling that the album is going to cycle back into my life and live set because there were so many songs on there that I didn't get a chance to focus on at the time and topics on there that didn't get their own light of day. I want to do that with all of my albums, go back and look at them with fresh eyes and pick out what I loved about them at the time and look at how it can inform me moving forward. There has been a lot of reflection in the past year on that ‘to be honest' album, I still love it and I think I took a lot of chances and risks with it which paid off and opened a lot of doors.
I liked what you did on your Instagram feed last year where you focused on some of your older songs and talked about them and revisited them again. I often think Country artists release so many songs and albums on a treadmill that a lot of good songs get forgotten about in the quest to always be looking for the next big hit. Where did the idea for that series come from?
Oh, I'm so glad that you liked that because I kinda stopped doing it and I'm actually about to film another thing today looking at the ‘Love, Heartbreak and Everything in Between' album because there's an upcoming anniversary with that album on the way. I just had this thought that there must be people who have never seen my social media before coming on board all the time and I wanted to give something to them. I'm still really proud of so many songs in my back catalogue that don't get a lot of light and attention.
The more I started posting the more people were, like, ‘That's my favourite song of yours' and I would never have known these things if we hadn't have started the series. It's a goal for 2026 that I want to do more of too.
If we are talking back catalogue then – by virtue of my age I was a big fan of Alannah Myles' ‘Black Velvet' when that first came out and I love your version of that song. If you had to record a cover song for your new project coming up later in 2026 what song would you choose that you love right now?
I was really into Avril Lavigne back in the day! I'd love to dip into that Pop / Punk realm maybe and find something that would surprise people a little, you know? Are there any lyrically that would be surprisingly Country that would suit a cover? I'm kinda in the early stages of messing around with that right now. I'd like to take something from a different genre and make it my own, I really loved recording ‘Wide Open Spaces' but it's hits a little differently when it's a song from a different genre so I will get back to you when I figure out what that song is! (laughing)
This time last year you set yourself the goal of ‘unbecoming' for 2025. Can you extrapolate a little on what that meant and did you achieve that goal?
It was an intention I set after going through a break up. I had started to look at my life and work out what parts of my life were just for other people and what parts are actually me. Younger me was kinda loud and out there and wore weird stuff and I missed her – I'd watched myself go into a box in recent years. That's what ‘unbecoming' was all about – I wanted to take that word and ‘unbecome' all of those parts of myself that I didn't believe in anymore and then I could become who I really wanted to be. I think I accomplished that goal by the end of the year and all the people who loved me and meant something to me came along with me too.
After a decade in the industry and the break up did you feel like you needed some time and space last year in 2025 which is why we didn't hear a lot from you?
Yeah. I wanted to figure out what I wanted to say. After four albums and an EP I felt like I had released a lot of music and said a lot of things. You get your entire life to write your first album and then you're supposed to write a bunch more in the following five or six years and that's crazy because you are not even living life at that point and have nothing to write about either, that was true for me.
I needed to have some time to find out who I was an go through that ‘unbecoming' phase. I turned 30 and I was, like, ‘but what it is I want to say now?' (laughing) I didn't want to sing about going to a bar and meeting someone any more I wanted to sing about real life but I needed to know what that looked like. I'm not taking the typical path of getting married and having kids so how do I sing about that and be relatable whilst also talking to people who aren't doing that? The best thing that I figured out was to just be me and hope that people come along with me, I realised that I can't be all things to everybody.
Carly Pearce deals with that issue in her latest song ‘Dream Come True,' have you heard that song?
I have. I texted her right after the song came out because it is something that is on the mind of people like us who have chosen careers in music or even outside music if it doesn't lead you as quickly to where you thought you were going to be. It's a great song that shines a light on that side of the our careers that are tough to navigate at times. We are not complaining, it's just the reality of what we have chosen to do. There are a lot of sacrifices that people don't see that go on behind the scenes.
I have always invested in my career, constantly, and some of those other things that I maybe should have had in place by the time I turned 30 weren't there. It's definitely not what some people always think it is but then there are those moments when it is and you get to experience these amazing moments out on the road, meeting people and feeling larger than life.
What are your goals for 2026?
This year I am going to set myself monthly goals. It's a mind set type of thing and I want to go into the creative process being very open and letting things just come to me. One of the cool things we are doing with ONErpm is releasing songs pretty frequently this year alongside the timeline of things that are going on in my life so I might have a completely different song or different idea come out in the summer time that doesn't even exist right now – we are looking at being more spontaneous with the way we release my music this year – that's a big goal. I want to let the ideas and songs come out as and when they do.
That sounds exciting and sounds like something you haven't done in your career up to this point?
It's been a minute since my first album and I really want to drill into what I've lived and experienced since then. There are some sassy songs in the mix too, it won't all be heartbreak and ballads! (laughing)
Check out Tenille Arts' fabulous new song ‘Don't Ruin Flowers' in all the usual places right now!
