Stories Behind Songs: Reagan Sheedy on "Love Note to Nashville"

A college student who just finished her freshman year at Belmont University, Reagan Sheedy is diving full-send into her first release post-moving out. “Love Note to Nashville”, Reagan tells me, is “definitely the most vulnerable song I've ever written.”

Reagan Sheedy performing at the Get Up Nashville

Listeners will immediately observe contrast between Reagan and other artists when they hit play on her Spotify catalog. Her voice is mature and strong – not what you’d typically expect of a nineteen-year-old. When I ask her how the mature sound of her voice impacts how she approaches songwriting, she bursts out laughing, “I honestly don't know if anyone has ever told me my voice sounds mature.”

“One of my songwriting professors, Jodi Marr, my queen, [said to] always write your songs where the sex and money is in your voice, which is, like, the sweet spot of your voice,” Reagan describes her vocal approach.

This ode to sex and money is symbolic of many of Nashville’s slogans and relates to “Love Note to Nashville”. These are among drugs, six-string guitars, bars, and other related entities in things that you’ll commonly observe references to in songs, signs, and everyday conversation regarding country music and Nashville. “Love Note to Nashville” is an ode to moving to “Music City” for college. Describing the song, Reagan cites Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell as inspirations. She refers to this era of folk music as one of intimate storytelling. However, it’s not a super familiar writing style to her. She typically finds inspiration in artists with strong voices and more upbeat sounds, such as Destiny’s Child. She adds other general favorites Giveon, TLC, and Taylor Swift.

“[This song was] one of those that just kind of, like, plopped down… in front of me,” as if appearing out of thin air. It was written shortly after she made the move to Nashville and was beginning to hear and meet local songwriters, “I love Nashville, and I love all the opportunities I've gotten this year… but it can be really hard to, like, be a songwriter in Nashville, and so I wanted to kind of… make a song that would… unify the musicians in that feeling of [it being] okay to not have it all together.”

The single cover for "Love Note to Nashville"

Reagan places emphasis on sync placement (ie. Song placement in movies or TV shows) as she discusses how genres play into songwriting. For her personally, “When someone is like, ‘What's your genre?’ I'm like, ‘Yes.’” Curious, I asked her what type of scene “Love Note to Nashville” would play over. “My gosh, it would be in, like, I don't even know,” she ponders the question. “A scene where… the character packed up all of her shit and, like, is moving… cross country, [in a] car montage with… the wind blowing in the background.”

Perhaps this final image is a good way of summarizing Reagan’s journey into the next part of her career. “Love Note to Nashville” will be her fourth ever release, but her first after living in the city of its namesake for a year. Having returned home to Kansas City for the summer, you can keep up with Reagan’s upcoming gigs on Instagram @reagansheedymusic. Stay posted on Reagan’s Spotify to listen to “Love Note to Nashville” when it releases tonight!