TWINNIE, the Nashville country pop star with York roots, returns to her home city on her five-date Crazy Ex tour to play The Crescent on November 28.
She will be promoting her second album, Something We Used To Say, released last Friday with no fewer than 22 tracks, in keeping with 2024’s most expansive records, Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter and Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department.
Documenting the devastation of the end of her long-term relationship and her attempt to move on with the songs that featured on her Blue Hour project, the album arrives with Twinnie on the crest of a wave. She has made history as the first British artist to perform the American national anthem at Geodes Park, home of MLS team Nashville SC – “proper football, and I won’t call it ‘soccer’,” she says – in the the wake of making her Grand Ole Opry debut last November.
“It was an amazing experience, making history with my background as the first Romany Gypsy singer to sing there,” she says.
Earlier this month, on November 2, she had the honour of performing a special Songwriter Session at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.
On top of all that, Twinnie is appearing on prime-time television screens as new character Jade in Emmerdale on her long-awaited return to soap opera after being nominated for Best Newcomer at the Inside Soap Awards for her role as Porsche McQueen in Hollyoaks (a part she played from November 2014 to December 2015).
“My life has been a bit crazy recently juggling music and acting, lots of back and forth, but loving it!” says Twinnie, who made her Emmerdale debut on October 11. “I’ve loved being back on screen, especially as the show is shot in Yorkshire. Being able to be home with family and go to work on such an iconic show has been nothing short of amazing!”
Having landed BBC Radio 2’s Album of the Week for her 2020 debut, Hollywood Gypsy, exceeded 25 million streams for her first American label EP, Welcome To The Club, and released the ambitious, two-chapter Blue Hour project, Twinnie set about making her second album. “It was recorded in Nashville, where I moved last year, and in England too,” she says.
“I really put the work in. With anything I do, I try to do it 110 per cent, drawing from other artists. I’ve really honed my craft. I’ll write twice a day at different sessions, sometimes three times. In Nashville writing rooms they realise ‘she knows how to write songs’, so they guide me rather than write songs for me.
“I’m that ‘5ft 8 British girl that talks funny’ – and there aren’t many doing that! I’ve really embedded myself in Nashville, where it really reminds me of being at home, going round for a cup of tea with my grandma, whereas in London I was missing that sense of community.
“I’d been going to Nashville on and off for seven or eight years, but as soon as I moved there, I made my Grand Ole Opry debut within eight months. Jamie Johnson made that happen for me: such a class act. A complete legend.”
You can take Twinnie out of Yorkshire but you can’t take the Yorkshire out of Twinnie, after first catching the eye as Twinnie-Lee Moore on the York musical theatre scene in her teenage days. “I’m big on authenticity. I still feel like I’m the same person,” she says. “I’m really proud to be putting Yorkshire and England on the American country music map, and my big ambition is to be the first British solo artist to have an American number one country album.”
It is not a case of Twinnie jumping on a country bandwagon. “Country music is pop music, it’s in the pop culture, and I was doing it before The Shires became The Shires, when I was working with Ben [Earle] from that group,” she says.
Explaining how the album took shape, Twinnie says: “After the last two Blue Hour EPS, I wanted to put out a body of work telling people what I’d been through, being dropped in 2022 by a major label [BMG] and by my boyfriend. We had a break-up: I’ve gone independent and there was nothing keeping me there any more, so I moved to Nashville.
“I’m so glad that I did with all the experiences I’ve had, with my new album celebrating my new life, grieving my old one, moving away from my family. I don’t want to be famous; I want to be infamous and to have people resonate with the sentiments of my music. Just go for it; you only have one life, so you might as well make it an adventure. That’s why I’m going to stay in Nashville.”
Twinnie plays The Crescent, York, on November 28, 7.30pm. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.