One of the most joyful artists I have ever met or interviewed is the delightful Paulina Jayne. While I have featured her briefly while covering CRS, I have never done a full Spotlight article on her.
I knew she was working on new music, and when I learned the song “If I Knew Me Then” was about to be released, I knew it was the perfect time to feature the singer/songwriter.
Paulina Jayne comes from a musical family. Her mother belongs to the acapella group Noteworthy. She grew up listening to these women singing crazy intervals and different notes that didn’t sound like they could be from the same chord.
Jayne was first put on the piano at age five, and she remembers an 80-year-old piano teacher named Mrs. Yonker.
“I, frankly, did not like it. I hated it,” she recalled. Her mom sat with Jayne at the piano and gave her private lessons.
Her mother said, “You're not just reading notes on a page. You're reading a letter from somebody who's in the grave, who's speaking to you and telling you to play this part louder and this part softer, to increase your speed and your tempo when you get to this section and then slow it down when you get here and be a little bit more legato. And you're reading this note that's in a language that few people in the world get to speak, and you're speaking it.”
After that, she learned to appreciate classical music when so many others deemed it dull.
A few years later, she got a guitar and fell in love with it. Once she got good enough to write songs on it, her music went from classically sounding to pop and eventually to country music because of the storytelling.
Growing up in Michigan, Jayne listened to Shania Twain, Kenny Chesney, Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, and Kelly Clarkson.
Jayne’s father was also into music and showed her the rhythmic side of things.
“I'm very fortunate to have grown up in such a musical household,” she stated.
But no one performed country music.
She remembers one of the first country songs she heard was when she was in Florida with her cousin Molly. She put on Kenny Chesney’s “Beer in Mexico.”
“Did I know about beer? I knew nothing. But I knew exactly where I was at the time, on a beach in Florida, listening to that song, I was like, ‘This is it. This is the life,’" she recalled.
Jayne signed her first record deal at age 13, where she learned to follow directions.
“I listened to my managers and team on what I was supposed to do and where I was supposed to go. And I started playing all over. I got to open for Sheryl Crow and play amphitheaters,” she stated.
In 2016, Jayne released the uplifting anthem “Love’s Gonna Always Win,” which, in my opinion, needs to be re-released.
She also put out the sassy and infectious “Big Booty Country Girl.”
Because of her loud-laughing personality, Ronnie Dunn called Jayne “Dolly Parton, Jr.” when she opened for Keith Urban and Vince Gill at Bridgestone Arena.
In 2017, she fully embraced her nonexistent country roots with the song “Country Music Everywhere,” which pays homage to several legendary tunes.
COVID struck as she continued to release and market her music, and in 2020, she had to cancel 80+ tour dates. “Everything came to a screeching halt,” she confirmed.
Jayne did what many artists did: She poured herself into songwriting while learning to produce her own material. Since then, she has become very intentional about why she writes songs and plays country music.
Faith has become even more important to the artist, as she has learned that “there is nothing and no one who loves me more than my God, my Savior.”
So much so that she explored Christian Music. “But that’s not where I’m supposed to be, at least for now,” she reported.
In 2021, Jayne released the song “Drove By” about a girl who drove by his house to see what he was doing. The song is so relatable because we’ve all done it.
“Half” was the song Jayne put out in 2023, which exclaims, “Take my half honey, and make it whole.”
As an independent artist, Jayne has opened for Rascal Flatts, Sam Hunt, Mitchell Tenpenny, Old Dominion, Keith Urban, Vince Gill, and Sheryl Crow, to name a few. She writes with #1 hit songwriters, like Rob Crosby, Michael Farren, Houston Philips, Dave Turnbull, Shane McAnally, JT Harding, and others.
Beginning this fall, Jayne began releasing a few of the songs she recorded at the famous Welcome to 1979 Studios produced by herself and Mike Hicks. Paulina solo-wrote most of the songs, co-wrote the remainder with #1 hit songwriter Rob Crosby, and even featured her mom as a co-writer on one of her songs.
On September 20, Jayne gave us her most personal, vulnerable song to date, “If I Knew Me Then.” The song is a painful learning experience about a date that went too far.
The words honestly state: If I knew me then like I know me now/ That’s a road that I would have never gone down/ I’d a have drawn that line, I’d a held my ground/ If I knew me then like I know me now.
She explained, “I've been taking some deep dives to get rid of old habits and maybe make better ones. I've just had many realizations about my heart, and I think I'm seeing that other people have those same realizations about theirs. And I just wanted to create a space in the form of a psalm that gave people the freedom to be as vulnerable as I am in that thing.”
I can’t recall ever hearing a braver, more authentic song. If this indicates what is to come, I look forward to hearing the songs Jayne has written that have not yet been released.
Paulina Jayne is a rising country star currently writing some of her career's best music. For this beautiful soul, the sky is the limit.
You can follow Jayne on her website, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X, YouTube, and all streaming platforms.
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Bethany Bowman is a freelance entertainment writer. You can follow her blog, Facebook, Instagram, and X