Over the past year, songwriter Aniston Pate has been making big waves in Nashville. You may have caught her at one of our rounds or at any number of songwriter events across town. If you haven’t heard her music yet — you’re bound to soon. Her unique grassy, Texas-inspired sound, hyper-personal lyrics, and radio-ready songwriting make a quick impression on her first-time listeners, which are growing in number.
At the end of March, she released her latest original single, “hummin’bird (Demo).” While the recording is brand new on streaming platforms, thousands of fans have already heard the tune.
Last November, Pate played the song as her audition for American Idol Season 22, and judges Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, and Lionel Richie were floored (watch that here). Last month, the show shared her audition on social media, and the clip has since racked up hundreds of thousands of views across YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. The viral moment was a well-deserved win, but what makes it even sweeter is what inspired Pate to write it.
“Me and Davis Loose were at The Local,” she recalls. “I told him that my aunt calls me her songbird, and then we got to talking about hummingbirds, and how my mom was always humming. So we left right then, went straight to his house and wrote the song in probably an hour.”
The final studio release unveiled earlier this year takes a pleasantly stripped-down approach, featuring just guitar, banjo, bass, and Pate’s soft croon. Produced by Collin Nash at KT Mack’s Park Ave West, “hummin’bird (Demo)” is Pate’s eighth song release in the last two years and will be sure to resonate with all fans of good songwriting.
Raised in Dalhart, TX, on her stepdad’s dairy farm, Pate got her start in songwriting and performing relatively young.
“I think my first gig was when I was 14 at the local steakhouse,” she says. “So I’ve been playing in bars since I was very young…but that’s pretty Texas. I think most musicians who grow up in Texas end up playing the bar scene young.”
A few years later, she enrolled at Belmont University and immediately got busy co-writing. While she never resigned from the artist pursuit, she says, songwriting started becoming her primary focus. However, over the last three years, something unexpected has happened.
“The artist thing has unintentionally gone pretty well,” she says. “That’s just God saying, ‘you’re supposed to be an artist; you’re supposed to write songs; you’re supposed to do both.’”
That’s a great thing for country music, because Pate’s sure to continue making some of the most authentic music in the genre for years to come. In May, she’s releasing her next single (also co-written with Loose), titled “Something You Miss.”
Be sure to follow Pate here so you don’t miss it — and check out “hummin’bird (Demo)” below: