‘What are your own goals?’ my therapist asked me.
‘Leave all this negativity behind and follow your own path,’ my mum reminded me.
Well, that’s all a bit easier said than done when you’re in the middle of your own massive reality TV psychodrama! All it had been was meltdowns and mayhem. Every single day was agg. But somehow, despite all that, I never completely let go of my biggest dreams – you remember the ones I told you all about?… Writing songs, recording tracks, going out on the road and, most importantly of all, getting on that tour bus!
All my life, I’d belted out a song whenever I got the chance. When I was little, it was my parents, nan and granddad who were my audience. Even back then, I took it all very seriously, having mini-meltdowns if it didn’t go properly and having little hissy fits if I didn’t get my song just right.
My voice had caught some people by surprise along the way. I’d had that sing-off in Ex on the Beach, and I’d had to sing for one of the tasks during Celebrity Big Brother. I remember one of the best things about that whole experience was being able to surprise people. The look on Darren Day’s face when I opened my mouth and he realised I could actually hold a tune! To be fair to them, after all my screaming, a ballad wasn’t exactly what they were expecting. But it’s all part of me. I’m definitely as musical as I am mouthy.
More recently, I got a fresh taste for singing when I got the chance to perform live on the West End stage just before Christmas 2016. Two of Strictly’s best ever dancers, Gleb Savchenko and Kristina Rihanoff, were in a show called One More Dance at the Adelphi Theatre on the Strand. As well as them dancing, the show also had singers from the West End, including a girl called Louise Dearman. She’d played Elphaba and Glinda in the West End production of Wicked, which just happens to be my favourite ever musical. So it was pretty overwhelming for me to be sharing the stage with her, standing next to someone I’d actually pay to see perform.
Louise was the main female singer for the show, but they brought me on to sing two songs while the pros were dancing. It’s fair to say I was shitting myself. Pete was in the audience that night and so were my family, so I knew I’d get a few cheers but I was still really worried about the reaction I’d get.
I sang two songs that night. One of them was ‘With You’ from Ghost – that’s a really difficult song. God knows why I agreed to do that one, as if I wasn’t nervous enough already – and the other one was ‘Arms of an Angel’ by Sarah McLachlan, a song I’ve always loved and had sung in the talent task in the CBB house with Kristina, my fellow housemate, watching on.
Bearing in mind I was in TOWIE at the time, what my manager Jade told me afterwards didn’t really come as a surprise. She said she’d overheard people in the audience at the beginning of the night, saying about me, ‘What’s she doing here? Can she even sing?’ Pretty understandable, really. But then when I got out there and opened my mouth, the atmosphere completely changed. Jade said you could have heard a pin drop out there, they were that shocked. What can I say? I do like surprising people.
Then, in the summer of 2017, just when it looked like all I might ever be famous for was shooting my mouth off on reality TV, I got the chance to do what I’ve always wanted. It was all about hard work and good timing.
Like so many good things in life, I got my musical break when I was least expecting it. It was when I was at my most miserable with Pete. To be specific, I was sitting in a TV studio with a fake smile on my face, because my relationship was going to shit.
It was that night of Celebrity Juice I told you about – the one when Pete had called me his ex-girlfriend, and Keith Lemon had cracked loads of jokes about texting – so I wasn’t exactly having a laugh. But on the same show, they asked me to sing something. I chose a country song, Carrie Underwood’s ‘Before He Cheats’, and I know I surprised a lot of people that night.
Normally, I’d say no to singing on the spot, but for some reason, my manager Jade had said, ‘You need to start singing when people ask, and show them your talent.’
I bumped into Louis Walsh backstage afterwards, and he said straight away, ‘You should go to Nashville, and get a film crew to go with you.’ Jade had been saying the same thing for ages, but I’d never thought anyone would really want to do that for me. Now I was hearing the same thing from someone huge in the music industry, and I thought, ‘That has always been my dream.’
Apart from me and Pete digging at each other all night, I had my share of luck. Some ITV producers were sitting in the audience for the show, and they said they were impressed with what they’d heard. Only a few days later, at the National Television Awards, one of the top guys from ITV came over to me and said, ‘You need to have your own show and go to Nashville.’ I said, ‘Everyone’s saying this to me now.’ I was thinking by now, ‘I really want this,’ and my manager set up a meeting the very next week. It all went from there.
The deal was, I had one month to film a show all on my own, write and record music and perform in some of the most famous venues in Nashville. If I could do all this, I would get a single green-lit back in the UK. Literally, my dreams of becoming a music artist were coming true. But, not gonna lie, I was absolutely shitting myself.
Even though everything was still completely shit with Pete at this point, inside I knew this was more important – it was, quite literally, the chance of a lifetime. I had to take it seriously and give it everything I had. So a few weeks later, I was heading to Nashville.
It might seem a bit random – Essex girl does country – but actually, this kind of music couldn’t be more perfect for me. Ever since I was little, I’ve always written down little stories in my diaries. As you might have guessed by now, I’ve always been really emotional, with a really big heart. Country music gives me a place to tell my stories and share those feelings.
Nashville is about four thousand miles from Essex, but it could literally be on the other side of the universe. That’s great because it means it doesn’t matter if you’ve appeared in a load of reality TV shows – they have no idea and they don’t care. But it means you have to prove yourself completely from scratch against a whole load of competition.
In the TV series There’s Something About Megan, they really highlighted my outsider status – I think the producers really liked the whole ‘Essex comes to Nashville’ thing – but they didn’t have to do that much to exaggerate. I was totally out of place when I first arrived. In the first scenes, you see me struggling with my suitcase, and they even filmed it when my heel got stuck in the escalator at the airport. Now that was embarrassing! I didn’t look like a country bumpkin, more like an Essex girl trying and failing to arrive in style.
I really loved it, though. The house I was staying in was absolutely beautiful – it was all wood outside, with loads of balconies and porches, proper Deep South, but inside everything was brand new and modern, so I had the best of both worlds.
The best part was having a bright-red truck. It was far too big for me, but it made me feel like I was in my very own Hannah Montana movie.
I made my first trip to the main downtown strip, and it was not what I expected. I thought it would all be a bit tumbleweed but it was the opposite – absolutely buzzing, with music coming out of every bar. It was at this point I realised I was going to have to up my game if I wanted to make any kind of impression in this town. There’s something like sixty live music venues spread over a few city blocks, and the one thing Nashville has plenty of is singer-songwriters. There’s huge amounts of competition, which meant I was going to have to come up with something not just impressive, but different. And let’s just say, I was definitely different. People noticed my Essex accent a mile off.
My manager had arranged a massive meeting for me with a huge music booking agent. For my meeting with this guy, Nick, I did what I always do when it’s a really important occasion – spend hours with the tongs on my hair, naturally. What a waste of effort that was! No air-con in the truck meant my bouncy blow-dry turned into a massive frizz just in time for my meeting. Can I just say, Nashville is one of the hottest places I’ve ever been. Driving around in a truck with no air-con is hell. I was sweating out of places I didn’t know I could sweat.
It turned out my hair didn’t really matter for this guy Nick. His agency represents actual icons, I mean real stars like Dolly Parton and Mariah Carey, so I was lucky he even agreed to see me, frizz or not. He didn’t treat me gently – why should he? – and he told me what I needed to do. He warned me about the tough crowds all over town – ‘they see a lot and they see it often’ – and he told me I’d have to win people over. He said, ‘There are forty thousand people in this town and they all look great.’ But he gave me one of the best bits of professional advice I’ve ever received. It was, ‘Be first or different.’
I was just starting to relax talking to Nick, when he suddenly asked me to sing. Right there, in his office, without any prep or even a warm-up. Fortunately for me, I’d had all those years at Ravenscourt and ArtsEd of doing exactly that. Somehow, despite all those reality TV years in between, my vocal cords knew what to do. Just like riding a bike, right? I stood up and belted something out, and he actually smiled! He admitted he hadn’t expected my voice to be that good. But he also said, ‘You need to work for this. I’m not going to sign you on the spot.’
The next task was to find a decent guitarist, which meant heading off to the strip to hear some session musicians. I met some weirdos along the way, including real-life cowboys and hillbillies, and then I heard two guys, Greg and Alex, performing in a bar. They were so good, like unreal – the standard in this town is SOOO high – but I finally decided to go for Greg. He was cute, seemed like a really nice guy, and was able to play anything! I also liked his general vibe – he seemed really upbeat, and I thought I might need that if things got a bit tough further down the line. Well, guess what? They did.
The next mission was to find a bar that would accept me for a performing slot. Make a note if you’re ever considering a singing career in Nashville – this is MUCH harder than it looks. You’d think bars would be grateful to have free musicians turning up and playing for the crowd. Not so much. Bars book bands months in advance, and I was told, ‘You can’t just walk in off the street.’ I tried a few bars, but it was all getting a bit difficult. Plus, I was starting to cough. Got to love my immune system. Never lets me down! And then it started to rain. And I mean pour down. I was shattered, and then I got a call from Bobby’s Idle Hour Tavern. They’d had a cancellation and wondered if I wanted to fill the gap. This was it, my big break! There was only one catch – he said, ‘I thought in return you might work a couple of hours?’ Okay, let me get this right – so in return for performing for free for your customers, I get to work for you pulling pints as well, also for free? Hmmm. I think we know who has the power in this town. Of course I said yes immediately.
It was time for my first session with Greg, and I couldn’t have asked for a better musician. He could play anything I asked him to. It was such an amazing night, singing along with Greg, sitting on this warm terrace with a guitar and a song sheet… nothing like my normal Friday night. By now, back home, I’d be down Faces with my girls, probably getting smashed. Don’t get me wrong, I do love all that, but this was better than anything I’d done before. It was magical.
And then – shock! – I got sick. The morning before the day of my gig – okay, to be a bit more accurate, my bar shift with a bit of singing thrown in – my cough got so bad that I had to call for a doctor, and she told me I had bronchitis. I was desperate. I’d worked for years to get this massive chance, and here I was in the middle of Nashville and my voice was going to let me down. Greg came over, and even he, Mr Positive Vibes, went a bit pale when he heard my cough. I heard him telling our producer how worried he was – I couldn’t get through a song. Pretty soon, I had to give up and go to bed. Just talking about it to camera made me cry. This was very different from all them tantrums I’d had in reality shows – this was my first real chance at doing my music, and I thought, ‘Am I going to blow it because of this bloody illness?’
What didn’t get shown on the programme was that my amazing sister Milly flew out to keep me company, look after me and just give me a cuddle. Like I said before, she’s not just my sister, she’s my best friend.
The day of the gig, I thought to myself – what would Dolly do? So I put on my little black dress and got in my red truck. After all those years in Nu Bar, it was time to pull some more pints. Bobby’s was right down one end of Music Row, where some of the biggest ever country songs were actually recorded. Taylor Swift has her studio there, and just across the way is Studio B, where Dolly recorded ‘Jolene’.
At Bobby’s, they thought it was alien that I couldn’t drink beer, but obviously it’s because of my allergies. They still thought that it was pretty weird. Being coeliac in Nashville was a struggle, with all the fried chicken. Finally, it was time for me to sing.
I should really have been in bed, and I was sucking cough sweets right up until the moment I got on stage. But as Dolly knows, the show must go on, folks! I went on stage with some other performers and waited my turn. This sort of thing is what every Nashville wannabe has to go through, it’s called a Writers Round. I had to sit on stage with three other performers, waiting for my turn to sing, with everyone staring at me. It was terrifying. When it came to my turn, I coughed all the way through the intro – bad start! – but somehow I got through two songs. However ill I was, I was never going to give up on this chance.
What I hadn’t realised was that there was someone else in the crowd listening, a lady called Beth Nielsen Chapman. She’s a Grammy-nominated songwriter – she’s written for Faith Hill, Willie Nelson, all sorts – and before I knew it, she was inviting me to come and do a writing session with her. Literally, I couldn’t believe this was happening.
Beth’s house was stunning. It looked like a real-life doll’s house, but the real magic happened in her writing room. She’d done her homework on me; she’d seen a few tantrums on YouTube and she was hilarious – she just called it ‘outrageous stuff’. I told her about my fiery side and my meltdowns, but I said they’d never happened ‘until I met boys’. She just said everyone goes through stuff, I’d just done mine publicly. It felt weird telling all this to a stranger, but good as well. It was like having a therapy session. And then her guitar came out, and she asked me to sing whatever was inside me. I was really nervous, but it made me realise this is what the business is really all about.
You do hear quite a few bad stories about the music industry, but this was definitely a positive. I realised it’s possible to put a song together from scratch. We played with melody and harmonies, and it was all very professional. For the first time, I started to understand the power of my own voice, and I could put all my feelings and emotions into a song. I could share exactly what I was thinking, without having to shout once.