Lindsay Ell — and Her Cab Driver! — Will Always Remember Her First Time on Country Radio
Country up-and-comer Lindsay Ell has a packed schedule, juggling her recent addition to the CRS New Faces Class of 2019, her first-ever headlining trek, the Monster Energy Outbreak Tour and much more. However, Ell says that she never forgets the moments that make everything worth it.
Read on to learn more about one of those moments: the first time the singer ever heard her song on country radio.
I will never forget it! I was in Phoenix, [Ariz., and] I had never heard my song on the radio before, and we were actually going out to dinner with the radio station. They were like, "What?! You've never heard your song on the radio before? We need to make this happen." So we finished dinner and walked out onto the street, and we hailed a cab over to the side of the road.
They knew that my song was coming up in rotation, so we had this cab parked on the side of the road. There were a bunch of people from my label and my team there, as well as the people from the radio station, and we were just sitting there, rocking out to the radio, waiting for it to come on.
It came on, and I started freaking out. I was sitting in the front passenger seat, with the cab driver, and I started jumping out of the car, hugging everybody, running around the cab. Then I get back in the cab, and I was just taking it in. The cab driver was freaking out with me, and giving everybody double high-fives. And then we realized the meter was running! So he was like, "Well, hey, we could do this all night, you know? I don't have to waste gas! I'm fine!" So it was pretty funny, but he was enjoying it for sure. He will probably never forget that, either.
It will never, ever get old. The fact that I can turn on the radio and hear my song, that I've written, and that I can play shows live and hear fans sing it back to me, that never gets old. All the chaos that we go through as artists, traveling for 23 hours out of the day, that moment [hearing your song on the radio] or that moment onstage hearing the fans sing back to you, those moments are what make everything worth it. When my parents freak out because they hear my song on the radio, they still text me a picture, saying "Oh my gosh!" That will never get old. That's what we do this for.
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