Caitlyn Smith

Caitlyn Smith, a performer and tunesmith working in country-tinged adult pop, issued her first solo album in 2001 at the age of 15. She later logged a solo career that reached the Billboard rankings, landing at number 24 on the Folk Albums chart with 2018’s Starfire. Parallel to those efforts, she built a thriving career supplying material to others, crafting tracks for Meghan Trainor and John Legend, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, James Bay, and the series Nashville. In 2020 she earned a Top 40 Country Airplay placement with “I Can't,” a collaboration with Old Dominion from the album Supernova, and followed that with her third full-length release, 2023’s High & Low.

Born and raised in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, Smith began performing vocally in church and studying piano while still young; by age 12 she was composing songs in earnest and picked up guitar the following year. She self-released her debut album, Learning to Be, in 2001, then issued the follow-up Silence in 2004 around the time she moved to Nashville. The more folk-leaning Face Over Heels appeared in 2007.

In the ensuing period she partnered with assorted professional writers to place songs with Jason Aldean, Rascal Flatts, and James Bay, among others, and contributed several original compositions to the ABC drama Nashville that debuted in 2012. She also co-wrote the title track of Kenny Rogers’ 2013 album You Can't Make Old Friends, which became a duet with Dolly Parton. Skylark Records put out her own Everything to You EP in 2014; that same year “Like I'm Gonna Lose You,” which she wrote with Meghan Trainor and Justin Weaver for Trainor and John Legend, achieved international success, peaking at number eight on the Hot 100 and topping the charts in Australia and New Zealand.

Smith returned to the Billboard rankings under her own name in 2016 when the Starfire EP charted on the Americana/Folk, Independent, and Heatseekers Albums lists. The full-length version followed in 2018 and reached number 24 on the folk tally. Supernova, released in 2020, produced two charting singles—“Long Time Coming” and the Old Dominion feature “I Can't.” She issued the EP High in 2022, which contained her second charting single “Downtown Baby,” then expanded that project with six more tracks in 2023 to form the album High & Low.