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As she releases her latest EP, Keep It Peachy, Bellah Mae reflects on growing up with big feeling, finding country music from the English Midlands and why creating her own lane has always mattered more than fitting into someone else’s.
By Phillza Mirza, June 2026
At a time when genre lines feel increasingly blurred, Bellah Mae isn’t interested in choosing sides.
Raised in the West Midlands on a soundtrack that stretched from Dolly Parton to Avril Lavigne, with a little Black Sabbath thrown in for good measure, the singer-songwriter has spent years carving out a space that feels entirely her own. Now based between the UK and Nashville, her music sits somewhere between country, pop and something harder to define. Sharp lyrics meet playful hooks. Vulnerability arrives hand in hand with wit. Sweetness rarely exists without a sting in its tail.
It’s a balance that runs throughout Keep It Peachy, her new six-track EP and first release with Sony Nashville. Across the project, Bellah explores heartbreak, confidence, self-doubt and personal growth with the same emotional honesty that has helped her build a devoted audience and rack up more than 100 million streams. Whether she’s delivering a cutting one-liner or unpacking a difficult emotion, there’s a sense that she’s less concerned with fitting into country music’s traditions than she is with stretching them.
Ahead of her CMA Fest debut and a summer spent introducing herself to American audiences on tour, we caught up with Bellah Mae to discuss songwriting as emotional survival, finding country music from outside Nashville’s orbit, and why being completely herself remains the most important thing of all.
PM:You started writing songs incredibly young. Looking back now, what do you think that younger version of you was trying to figure out through music?
BM: I’ve always been someone with big feelings and I think big feelings can often feel confusing and hard to digest if you don’t have an outlet. And so songwriting was always just trying to figure out a bigger picture meaning behind why I was feeling that way and I think as it transpires a lot of people have experienced those same feelings.
PM: You’ve said you absorbed country music through a completely different lens growing up in the UK. What do you think you were able to hear in the genre that maybe people inside it take for granted?
BM: There’s really so much soul and character to the genre but it is prevalent whether it’s intentional or not. It’s hard not to really feel something by the depth of the music and the lyrics and that’s always been my favorite part of the genre.
PM: You’ve described your sound as country-pop, but there’s also something much gritter sitting underneath it. Do you feel like you’re intentionally pushing against what people expect a ‘country girl’ to sound like?
BM: I really think my genre is Bellah and that my song always just sounds like a Bellah song… I think they take a lot of inspiration from both genres but also from so many other things. I’m English and have spent a lot of my life living in Central London but now living in Nashville, my worlds genuinely are very collided. I always just make music that feels like exactly what I want to make on that day and I feel like a very classic Bellah song is typically full of some interesting lyrics, bouncy melodies and a unique title or pay off line, whether the production and instrumentation leans more country or pop side that day depends on whatever feels good for that song.
PM: Your music has always had wit to it, even when the subject matter is painful. Do you find humour helps you tell the truth more honestly?
BM: I think it’s also majorly my personality to be a little witty through harder subject matters or tough days so it feels very authentic to do that in my songs too.
PM: Dolly Parton’s manager mentoring you early on feels almost mythological. What’s one piece of advice from that time that genuinely stayed with you?
BM: Something Dolly and the enterprise around her do almost better than anybody is how she solidified her brand so strong that she can spin off into so many things ie jeans, ice cream collabs, perfumes, a theme park etc, and it still feel Dolly. It really taught me how having and knowing your brand in this industry is so powerful.
PM: You trained as a classical soprano for over a decade, do you still feel connected to that side of yourself creatively?
BM: I still use a thick vibrato all the time when holding out any big note so I’d say yes.
PM: You’re currently touring the US for the first time at this scale. What’s surprised you the most about playing these songs live?
BM: I really had no idea what to expect with whether people would know my songs or not on this tour, but I was so surprised with how many people did. Just being in a country that’s not mine and also a tour that wasn’t my own and still having so many people singing my songs back to me.
PM: Your music often sits between being sweet and slightly dangerous. Were there artists you listened to growing up who inspired this?
BM: Yes there’s definitely elements from artists like Miley Cyrus and Avril Lavigne that I would’ve taken inspiration from whilst growing up.
PM: You’re entering this next era with a new label, a new EP, and your first CMA Fest appearance. What do you hope people understand about you by the end of this year that they maybe don’t yet?
BM: I really believe that I walk my own little line between country and pop and the way that I show up as an artist and how much I do it because of how much I love it so I think that’s always what I hope people take away from experiencing me and my music.
What emerges from our conversation is someone remarkably comfortable with contradiction.
Bellah Mae can talk about vulnerability one moment and sharp-tongued songwriting the next. She credits country music’s emotional depth while refusing to be confined by its expectations. Even her description of her sound resists easy categorisation. To Bellah, the genre isn’t country or pop, it’s simply Bellah.
That confidence feels central to Keep It Peachy. The confidence to embrace complexity. To be witty and wounded. Sweet and stubborn. British and Nashville. As more listeners continue to discover her music, it’s that refusal to flatten herself into a single identity that makes Bellah Mar such a compelling voice.
Whatever shape her next chapter takes, it’s clear she’s not following a blueprint. She’s writing her own.
