Nicolle Galyon made a living telling other people's stories until she decided it was time to tell her own

Updated on July 23, 2022 11:28 AM by Emily Hazel

As a result, it should come as no surprise

Nicolle Galyon, a talented songwriter, rarely capitalizes proper nouns, and her commas may be questioned. So it's no shock that song titles on her lengthy new album, firstborn, were not capitalized, and each song title had its own full stop at the end.

Galyon explained

"It just makes it feel like a complete thought, a full assertion, I guess you could say," Galyon, 38, explains in a recent PEOPLE interview. "I approached trying to write this album more like a writer than an artist. And those titles feel to me like paragraphs in a book, with each chapter having a distinct ending."

In 2020

Granted, firstborn appears to be more of a beginning for the woman who has given the world plenty of lyrical masterworks, including Miranda Lambert's ACM Award-winning "Autopilot" and Dan + Shay's multi-platinum, Academy award "Tequila."

However, as the flu epidemic raged and Galyon fled back to her hometown of the British pound, Kansas, in 2020, in search of physical and emotional safety, she found herself yearning for the opportunity to tell a little of her possess tale.

She questioned aloud

"I began thinking to myself that if I disappeared tomorrow and my grandchildren Googled me, will indeed writing a song about a 22-year-old splitting up with her bf be the story I wanted them to know?" she asks aloud.

"Is that the story my children would know about me? I felt compelled to call b—-h on myself. I couldn't call myself a storyteller unless I'd told my own."

Galyon recalls

The internal reflection did not end there. "I realized that if I didn't make a record telling my own story, I would kick myself for the rest of my life. " Galyon started work on the newborn child, a truly magnificent repertoire of musical masterworks trying to tell the story of her life in eleven melodic chapters, with the song "winner." serving as the final synopsis.

Galyon says

"That one is the ablest to zoom out and tells you what the documentation is about to tell you in more detail," Galyon says of the song she co-wrote with Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne. "It encompasses my entire journey as a woman, a career woman, and a mother."

She did flock to a long list of her talented friends

While Galyon might have quickly tried to tell her own story, she enlisted the help of a long list of famous folks, such as Hillary Lindsey, Sasha Sloan, and even music superstar Kelsea Ballerini.

"I really just ran to the people who made me feel the safest," she says of the talented writers who have joined her on firstborn. "I really needed to surround myself with people who I felt were willing to accompany me there." And, yes, the wait was worthwhile.

A talented husband

Today, she appears to have it all: a talented husband (equally achieved lyricist Rodney Clawson), two flourishing children (9-year-old Charlie and 7-year-old Ford), and a home back in the place where many of her dreams remain unfulfilled.

Nashville said

"I really don't feel like my narrative has been evidence there yet," Galyon, who is now back in Nashville, says. "I also have this business that I am proud of. I have so many artists who are on the verge of sharing their stories, and that's what drew me back