Rachele Lynae is quickly making a name for herself in country music, both for her powerful voice and her well-crafted songs she writes. The California native released her sophomore Every Reason album in May, filled with 12 songs that the rising star co-wrote, uncovering another layer of who she is as a singer, songwriter and artist.

“Ever since I was really, really little, I always wanted to be a singer when I grew up,” Rachele told Everything Nash. “But then when I was 12, I started songwriting and honestly, songwriting and being an artist has always gone hand-in-hand for me. So being the writer of this, I’m always open to recording music that others have written because there’s so much amazing songwriting in this town. When you’re looking at other people’s music, there’s a few things that you have to really relate to its core. So it’d have to be more than just, ‘Oh, this is an amazing song.’ It has to be like, ‘Oh, I relate to this; I could have written it. From my emotional experience, I could have written this.'”

Rachele already had plenty of songs she had written, so the hardest part for her was deciding which ones would make it onto Every Reason.

“When it was time to get a group of songs together, even just from songs that I had written, it was at least over a hundred initially. And then I narrowed it down to 44 songs. That was my starting base of, ‘OK, from these 44, I’m going to figure this out.’ That’s kind of how the songwriting played into it.”

Rachele is married to songwriter, producer and musician Tim Creedon, and although he didn’t write any of the songs on Every Reason with her, their relationship was the catalyst for several of the songs on the record.

“Just because of the season of life that I’m in, I’ve found that a lot of these songs were very much inspired by my relationship with my husband,” Rachele reflected. “There’s this kind of idea sometimes in the creative community that once you’re happy, then your muse is going to be gone. It’s a big concern. I’d always thought, ‘Oh gosh, that’s true.’ But what I actually found is that I still have all the ammunition of every relationship I’ve ever been in. But now on top of that, I can write a genuine love song. It doesn’t sound nearly as cheesy as all the ones I had tried to write before.”

Rachele released both Every Reason and her self-titled freshman album (produced by Jamie O’Neal) on her own, but she isn’t opposed to signing with a major label, if she can still make the music she wants to make.

“Just for practical reasons, I do believe that the major labels still have such a powerful reach and they have a really powerful system in place for getting music out to fans,” Rachele acknowledged. “Getting music heard as an independent, it’s a lot more work and there’s a lot of things that I don’t necessarily have access to the same way that a major does. I do love having my creative control and this album has been so beautiful to have that. So from a creative standpoint, there’s that, but I’ve also seen where you don’t just sign anything, but you want to be able to put food on the table.”

Rachele knows that it is a challenging time to be a woman in country music, especially now, but she remains hopeful that the tide is, at least slowly, shifting in favor of female artists.

“I feel like there’s some changing happening,” said the singer. “We have huge advocates, like Leslie Fram, whose goal is to move CMT towards 50-50, playing 50 percent female videos, 50 percent male. And then we have Bobby Bones, who was straight up featuring women all the way. There’s definite movement. There’s still a little bit of a feeling of some pushback. It’s an old habit that is just being a little difficult to completely kick from the radio industry.”

Purchase Every Reason by visiting Rachele’s website.

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