Allie Colleen is carving out her own space in country music with a sound that blends tradition and modern edge. Known for her heartfelt storytelling and powerful vocals, she has steadily built a name for herself, earning national recognition in 2024 by performing on the final leg of Jelly Roll’s Beautifully Broken Tour and touring with Lee Brice on his Me and My Guitar tour. Whether supporting major acts or headlining her own shows, Allie captivates audiences with her raw emotional honesty and distinctive voice. Her songs explore themes of love, heartbreak, and resilience, making her one of the most compelling rising artists in country music today.
With her latest EP ‘Sincerely, Rolling Stone,' (our review here) Allie Colleen solidifies her place in the genre, embracing her unique artistry with a fearless blend of country, rock, and pop-punk influences. While her previous releases—Stones (2021), Halos and Horns (2022), and Tattoos (2023)—showcased her evolution as a musician, this project feels like a defining moment. She acknowledges her lineage but refuses to be defined by it, proving with each song that she is forging her own path. In this interview, Allie opens up about her journey, musical evolution, and the personal stories behind her latest project.
Thank you for taking time to talk to us today, Allie, we know how busy you must be in release week!
It's lovely to talk to you. It's funny because we have an EP launch party planned but not till March 6th, so I've been tunnel-visioned towards that and I keep forgetting the EP is actually out on Friday (today, February 21st). (laughing)
I'm actually going to Vegas with some girlfriends for the weekend on Friday and I shall be celebrating the EP release with my friends and then we'll celebrate with the fans on March 6th.
We last spoke in 2021 around the release of your ‘Stones' album. How do you think you changed as a writer and an artist since that album?
Oh man, so much, lots! (laughing) What I'm now choosing to put out as an artist is almost totally different now compared to back then. We've only put out singles since the ‘Stones' album and each one has been slightly different. I'm also turning 29 this year, which means I'm in a totally different season of my life to where I was back in 2021.
The ‘Stones' album was me writing narratives for people that needed those particular songs. I related to those songs but I was really writing for other people back then. The singles I have put out since then have really been much more about me, who I am and my branding. With ‘Sincerely, Rolling Stone' I feel like these five songs are like the ones that would never make it to a full album, they would definitely never be radio singles and I'm not even really sure some of the songs are that relatable to other people, I hope they are, but I didn't write them that way. I wrote these songs for me.
I'm really excited – a little nervous – but really excited. ‘Grass on the Grave' has been out for a while now and one of them, ‘Rolling Stone,' I've been playing in my live set since 2021 – it's been with me the longest time. I've wanted to put that song out so badly but I never knew if it would have a life or not so when we decided to put out this EP I thought that we might as well put out all the other little wonky guys too! (laughing)
The EP feels like it's all about you coming home. It feels like you've found yourself with ‘Sincerely, Rolling Stone.' You've been experimenting with different sounds on tracks like ‘Halos and Horns' and ‘Tattoos' but this feels like we are getting complete Allie.
I'm so happy to hear that because it feels like that to me as well. The pivotal moment for me was ‘Halos and Horns.' We took that track from the writing room into the studio and it became such a different beast. The guitars are the dirtiest thing we've ever got to record and playing that song live was a revelation – I was getting bored of my own sets, I won't lie and I was just waiting to play that song the whole time! (laughing) It sonically set me up for what was to come because I've always said I want to be the Amy Lee (Evanescence) of Country music but I just couldn't figure out what that sounded like – I knew what it meant thematically for me, but the sonics were a whole different thing. ‘Halos and Horns' provided that pathway.
Being on tour with Jelly Roll must have exposed you to a whole bunch of new people last year. Are you also gaining followers on Instagram with your gym and fitness journey as well?
Yeah! I've gained so many more from that than from music in some respects, it's crazy! (laughing) With the Jelly tour, it was just, like, when you see someone with a tip jar and it's full, you think they are good, right? But when the tip jar only has six dollars in it it makes you think that you have an opportunity to help someone.
When I play downtown Broadway and do four hour cover sets and do the things that are authentically me – which is still working very, very hard to make a living from music – that is when I receive from people. With the Jelly Roll tour it was almost the opposite. I started that tour with about 60,000 followers on Instagram and I came off the road with about 65,000 followers – which is really frustrating when you consider we were playing to around 15,000 to 17,000 people a night! (laughing) The exposure was still amazing and I loved every moment of that run but I do have a lot of gym followers that crave a very different thing from me, it's a weird meeting of two very different worlds. The gym posts provide me with my most authentic gaining of followers but the music industry doesn't think so or really want me to post pictures of me working out but I still do it!
You mentioned the the word ‘authentic' there. ‘Oklahoma Mountains' and ‘Household Name,' two songs on your new EP, are both very authentic songs regarding your upbringing, your lineage and your family history. Very vulnerable songs – were they hard to write and are you worried that platforms like Whiskey Riff will try and find something salacious or sensational about what you are saying in those songs?
(laughing) I them blocked so they can write what they like about me, I won't see it anyway. To answer your question simply, yes! On all levels, yes. I love ‘Oklahoma Mountains' so much – my friend brought in the idea. He shared the title with me and I was, like, ‘Have you ever been to Oklahoma, there aren't any mountains there at all!' (laughing) I'm not even sure most of the state is above sea level, right? We made the mountains about your own personal climb – no-one relates more to that song than my dad (Garth Brooks). Everyone thinks he's my mountain and my shadow and in a way, he absolutely is, but the weight, the heaviness and the shadow on me in that song is me, not him.
My shadow is what I have created out of my own pride and ego in that song. My dad is just my dad, right? My moms are just my moms. To the rest of the world, that isn't the narrative but within my family that's all they are, those are their roles in my life, my parents. I am really nervous in case anyone interprets ‘Oklahoma Mountains' or ‘Household Name' as me having any kind of resentment at all. I get the silliest questions asked of me – there are so many people who ask things like, ‘So, have you ever met your dad?' The silliest questions like ‘If you don't sing under your last name you must not be that close to him then?'
I wanna be just like my dad. He came from, arguably kinda nothing financially in a house full of eight people. He worked his tail off for everything he's ever achieved and ever done. It feels like, sometimes, people think that I don't want to connect myself to his name and his legacy – that is not true – I want to replicate his legacy, I want to work my tail off and be just like my dad. I want ‘Allie Colleen' to represent a legacy in the exact same way that he has built but I need to do it on my own terms.
Let's talk about ‘Nicotine,' which is such a haunting song. It closes down the EP in fine style. Tell me about the inspiration behind that song.
‘Nicotine' was brought in by my good friend Megan Barker. She does the thing that Megan always does, which is to say, ‘I have this title, but it might not be very good.' (laughing) We already knew it was gonna be great – and she goes, ‘It's nicotine, in the nick of time.' And I said, ‘That'll do!' (laughing)
None of us are smokers on that song. It's about wanting whatever quick fix you need at any given time to get by or to move on. For me, that's always been my relationship world. It's always been so hard, as an artist, to connect to people. ‘Nicotine' was a really cool way to express my vulnerability at this stage in my life right now. Coming out of the ‘Stones' album era, I got divorced in 2021 and I felt like my fans and followers got two songs about that from me, we gave them ‘Grass on the Grave' and ‘While We're Still Friends' and so ‘Nicotine' will be the first time I've put out a more tender, love-song kinda song. It really isn't a love song but the whole first verse is about getting outside and setting up the smoke, the chorus is like the first big inhale as you get your fix and the second verse is the exhale with the whole EP ending when you stub the whole thing out in the ash and go about your normal life.
This EP will be released on vinyl – your first ever product in that medium.
All five songs are just on one side of the vinyl – I didn't want the flow of the listening experience to be interuptted by having to flip the vinyl over. ‘Nicotine' ends with the fizzy, crackle of classic vinyl, which is cool.
When you flip the vinyl over there is something extra on the B side – I thought about sitting down with someone like Ashley McBryde and listening to her talk about the years she spent toiling away and building up her fan base and reputation whilst seemingly not getting anywhere. I thought about how cool a learning experience that would be to spend time with someone who had gone through that experience. So we thought about including an unshared demo of a song on the B side of the EP to give back to the fans but it ended up being just a little message from me to anyone who has taken the time to buy the EP and listen to it and invest in me. I'm really proud of it!
You've put so much thought, time and effort into this project………
I listened to over 45 minutes thunder pre-roll audio just to select two seconds of thunder for ‘Household Name' and I picked the best two seconds of thunder that there has ever been! (laughing) I also got to pick the musicians and players for this project for the first time too. They are the perfect hodge-podge of the live session players that appeared on my ‘Stones' album and the people that Lee Brice and Jerrod Neiman introduced me to on the ‘Halos and Horns' project. I couldn't have done this without my producer and I thank him for allowing me to be so involved in the project.
Your enthusiasm for this project is palpable so I dread asking this last question but have you got the next project already lined up for later in the year or maybe next year?
I have! (laughing) I've started it. It's going to be the first ever project that I release where I will have written the whole thing myself. I think people will be expecting me to return to really commercial music after this little project where I just got to say whatever it was that I wanted to say…………… Nooooo! Now I want to write the whole next project too.
We'll still put out a couple of singles – just like we did between ‘Grass on the Grave' and the release of the EP, which was ‘Outlaw.' We have a couple of those we are working on now, fun, rocking summer songs, right? But there will be a time where the ‘Miserable' project comes out! It's not a sad project by any means but I do love my one-title projects and ‘Miserable' is a start, it's the first song of the collection that I am willing to share. It'll be weird, and I'm very excited!!
Go check out Allie Colleen's new EP ‘Sincerely, Rolling Stone' which is out in all the usual places today!
