Today, Country Pop Artist, Kaylee Bell returns with her latest single, ‘Small Town Friday Nights’.
The new single, ‘Small Town Friday Nights’, is a follow up to her smash hit, ‘Keith’, which peaked at #1 on the Countrytown Hot 50 Country Airplay Chart, charted in the US, Canada, UK, Norway, and New Zealand and took the #1 All Genre spot in Australia for a week ahead of Harry Styles and Luke Combs. The song written as a tribute to Keith Urban, also earned Kaylee the title of the ‘Most Streamed Country Artist for Australasia’ in 2022 with ‘Keith’ being the most streamed country song of the year with over 12 million streams. In total, she boasts over 40 million global streams to date.
‘Small Town Friday Nights’ was co-written with Nashville hitmakers Lindsay Rimes (Kane Brown, Thomas Rhett) and Phil Barton (Lee Brice) who Bell collaborated with on ‘Keith’ during a recent writing trip in Nashville – her first in two years after travelling there every year for the past 12 years.
“I had the idea and song title ‘Small Town Friday Nights’ in my song bank for a while and I knew I wanted to write it that day, so I took it to Phil and Lindsay and we wrote this song super-fast,” Kaylee admits.
‘Small Town Friday Nights’ is an anthem and a call for celebration for anyone who grew up in a small town and loves to throw it down on a Friday night.
“I was raised in a small town Waimate, in the South Island of New Zealand with a population of 3000 people and some of my best memories are of Friday night’s hanging with my friends,” Kaylee says. “The whole town would go and play touch footy then head off to the pub or off to a house party or bonfire in a paddock out in the country. These were some of the best memories of growing up in a small town and I vividly remember how significant Friday nights were. They bought the town together and it didn’t matter how old you were, everyone hung out.”
The accompanying music video was shot by Brooks Barry in Leiper’s Fork, Nashville and captures that same carefree and breezy spirit of the upbeat track.
“Leiper’s Fork, a little area outside of Nashville was a place that I absolutely fell in love with while I was in the States. It reminded me so much of home,” confesses Kaylee . “I was thinking of shooting a music video in Nashville for the song while I was listening to the demo while out for a Sunday drive and I just happened to drive past the red truck on the side of the road that we ended up using in the clip. It was sitting there with a ‘for sale’ sign on it and I loved how much of a story it looked like it told and how beat up it was and I knew I wanted to have in the video.”
“I hadn’t driven in America before due to the wrong side of car and road situation, and so my first experience of driving in the US was driving this truck for my music video… of course it was,” she laughs.
Having started singing at four-years-old, Kaylee moved to Australia at age 21 to where she won the prestigious Toyota Star Maker Prize and released her debut studio album, ‘Heart First’, in 2013. Supports for The Chicks, Keith Urban and Morgan Evans followed, as well as festival slots at CMC Rocks and C2C London, and shows in New Zealand, Australia and the US.
Other accolades include being the first artist outside of the US to win the US Unsigned Only Global Grand Prize, winner of the APRA NZ ‘Best Country Song’ and winner of the prestigious Tui Award for ‘NZ Best Country Artist’ at the Aotearoa Music Awards. She was also the face of Spotify’s EQUAL campaign and saw her featured in Times Square, New York representing female in music globally.
Kaylee recently teamed up with James Johnston on ‘Same Songs’, which has over 1.4 million global streams to date and continues to climb the Countrytown Hot 50 Country Airplay Chart after having peaked at #4. She has previously collaborated with Jared Porter (‘Pieces’), Canadian country pop singer Lindsay Ell (‘Living Free’), Bastian Baker (‘A Heart Don’t Break Like That’), Australian sister trio The McClymonts (‘Before I Met You’), Josh Mirenda ( ‘That Summer’), Lepandi (‘That Summer’) and fellow 2022 The Voice Australia finalist, Finnian Johnson (‘Landslide’).
In addition to the new single, Kaylee will support US country superstar, Brad Paisley on the New Zealand leg of his current world tour alongside Morgan Evans and MacKenzie Porter and perform at Groundwater Country Music Festival on the Gold Coast on Saturday 29th October.