Will Old Dominion And Songland’s Judges Find The Next Country Music Hit?
NBC Reading Time: 4 minutes
This week on Songland, we’re back to good ‘ol country music! Country band Old Dominion is looking for a song with a special twist. The winner will be featured in an upcoming Jeep commercial!
About the band Old Dominion
Old Dominion is a five-member country band from Nashville, Tennessee. They have released two studio albums, “Meat and Candy” and “Happy Endings”, with a third to come out later this year. The first two were both so well received that they soared to the top 10 on the US country charts. And Songland‘s Shane McAnally was the producer on them!
Trevor Rosen and Brad Tursi will be tough Songland judges on tonight’s episode
Why? Because both of them are prolific song writers themselves.
Trevor Rosen has written songs for a number of celebrated musicians over the years, including “Pioneer” for The Band Perry, “Fuse” for Keith Urban, “Riser” for Dierks Bentley, “Bringing Back the Sunshine” for Blake Shelton, and “Kill the Lights” for Luke Bryan.
Brad Tursi has written songs for Kenny Chesney, Maddie & Tae, Frankie Ballard, Swon Brothers, Josh Turner, and Joey Hyde. In short, these contestants won’t have it easy and we wouldn’t want it any other way. After all, we want these songwriters to be judged by the best in the biz!
Well, it’s shaping up to be another exciting episode of Songland! Here are the four songwriters competing to write for the Old Dominion Jeep commercial:
Katelyn Tarver
This name actually might be familiar to you already! Katelyn Tarver is an actress and singer-songwriter. She is best known for her recurring roles as Jo Taylor on Big Time Rush and Mercedes on The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Originally from Glennville, Georgia, Katelyn has also made a name for herself in music. She has released two EPs and was featured on “You” by the Lost Kings. Her YouTube channel has over 280,000 subscribers and videos have as many as 39,000,000 views! Katelyn is definitely not new to the spotlight, so that could work in her favor.
Katelyn’s Songland song is called “Young”. It’s a slow jam about love and I could see it being part of a more emotional, relationship-based Jeep commercial. You know, how they show a couple exploring together in their car? I’m sure you understand. Old Dominion says they “feel” it, then proceed to jam on the track. Ester suggests changing the lyric to “I just wanna stay young forever FOR you” and the producers all love it. The band does suggest making the verses less feminine, but overall seem happy with “Young”!
Jake Scott
Based out of Los Angeles, Jake Scott is a singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. His debut EP, released shortly after he graduated from University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, hit the Billboard Heatseeker chart and went #4 on the iTunes chart. That’s quite an accomplishment for such a young indie artist! He has since written for artists like Aloe Blacc, Jason Mraz, Christina Perri, Carrie Underwood, Morgan Wallen (from season 5 of The Voice!), and Sara Evans. But on Songland, he’s hoping to add Old Dominion to his list of credits!
MACI
The third featured artist is MACI, a pop singer-songwriter from Nashville, Tennessee. There’s not much information about her online, but she looks young from her Instagram and she definitely has a cool Nashville vibe. MACI has released a few original songs of her own! Her most recent is “Beat Me to the Punch,” a single with rap artist Canon.
Jacobi.e
Isaac Edwards, better known as Jacobi.e, is an artist from Southern California. From his covers on Instagram, it seems like Jacobi.e is more of a pop/R&B singer-songwriter. But his voice is epic! It’ll be interesting to see if his style fits Old Dominion on the show. In the meantime, he is releasing a new song tomorrow! Not a great sign for his chances.
If you’re excited for the featured artist this week, Songland posted a video about what Old Dominion looks for in a song. They even mentioned their connection to Shane McAnally, who they’ve known for 10 years! Old Dominion on Songland airs Wednesday night at 9/8c on NBC.
