Girls Write Nashville, a nonprofit that works with teen artists to write, produce and release music, put on its first-ever benefit show featuring a powerhouse lineup Sunday night at 3rd and Lindsley. (We also recognized the organization for the Best Teen Programming in our Best of Nashville issue.) The mostly acoustic in-the-round style show included Brittany Howard, Margo Price, Becca Mancari, Tristen and Erin Rae. But the alums from Girls Write Nashville — Amira the Weirdo and Magdalene — were the real stars on the stage.
Magdalene, age 15, sat onstage alongside Rae, Tristen and Mancari, performing “One Hit,” a ballad she wrote during her time with Girls Write. Folks fell silent, and it felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the room. When the song ended and the stunned audience cheered, we needed the reminder from Rae that it was OK to breathe now.
Rae kicked off the evening’s pair of rounds with her own “Putting On Airs,” a dreamy tune from her 2018 release of the same name. Tristen went with a more rockin’ choice for her first song in the round, “Athena” from her latest Aquatic Flowers — the song a callout to the way stories written about women by men often ignore strength and wisdom in favor of sexuality.
In between banter about the necessity of programs like Girls Write Nashville and some playful jealousy from the elder players about just how good the young’uns were, Mancari broke hearts with the song “First Time.” The tune opens with the devastating line: “I remember the first time my dad didn’t hug me back.” Magdalene followed up with an impressive acoustic cover of The Killers’ “Read My Mind.” Tristen delivered this reviewer’s favorite moment of the night with a performance of the earworm “Complex.” It is fun to watch a crowd unable to keep themselves from dancing and bobbing their heads along — something you definitely couldn’t get from a lockdown-era livestream.
In the second half of the evening, Price dedicated her first song “Hands of Time” to her mother, who was in the audience. For her other turns at the mic, she treated the audience to 2017’s “All American Made” and “Letting Me Down” from 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started.
Amira the Weirdo’s contributions to the evening were funky electronic compositions with addictive hooks, all of which she produced herself and some of which she penned several years ago at age 12. The most infectious of the bunch was “Oxygen,” a song she wrote during the pandemic and which you can hear on Girls Write’s Sing Through the Quarantine album.
“I’m an introvert — not really a person who likes being around a bunch of people,” Amira the Weirdo said, introducing the song. “But during the pandemic I started to have these feelings like, ‘I miss talking and being around people,’ and it just surprised me. That’s what this is about.”
Almost every artist expressed that they wished they’d had a program like Girls Write Nashville — which raised almost $65,000 Sunday night — when they were young. After performing “All American Made,” Price joked that she may not have written the song when she was 12, but she still thought it was pretty good.
After “Oxygen” came to a close, Alabama Shakes frontwoman and widely loved solo artist Brittany Howard grinned, laughed and told the audience: “I am shooketh.”
For her own contributions, Howard was beckoned on stage during Mancari’s “Tear Us Apart” to lend some vocals to the end of the song, adding to a beautiful chorus made up of some painful words that repeat over and over: “They’re trying to tear us apart, they’re trying to tear us apart.” Howard also performed “Short and Sweet” from her solo album Jaime and “Bringing Your Love to Me,” a yet-to-be-recorded tune.
The night ended with Howard’s bop “Stay High” — the crowd did a damn good job with the double clapping. A verse in the song perfectly encapsulated the evening:
“There comes a time, there comes a time,
At night, where we get to play,
And we smile and laugh and jump and clap,
And yell and holler and just feel great.”
The full list of performances is below.
First Set
- Erin Rae, “Putting On Airs”
- Tristen, “Athena”
- Becca Mancari, “Forgiveness”
- Magdalene, “One Hit”
- Erin Rae, “Lighten Up”
- Tristen, “Cool Blue”
- Becca Mancari, “First Time”
- Magdalene, “Read My Mind” (The Killers cover)
- Erin Rae, “Modern Woman”
- Tristen, “Complex”
- Becca Mancari feat. Brittany Howard, “Tear Us Apart”
- Magdalene, “Melt”
Second Set
- Margo Price, “Hands of Time”
- Amira the Weirdo, “Feel the Rain”
- Brittany Howard, “Short and Sweet”
- Margo Price, “All American Made”
- Amira the Weirdo, “Oxygen”
- Brittany Howard, “Bringing Your Love to Me”
- Margo Price, “Letting Me Down”
- Amira the Weirdo, “One More Time”
- Brittany Howard, “Stay High”
