Jenna Raine

Jenna Raine fuses piano and other grounded sonic elements with crisp contemporary beats to shape her luminous, heartfelt pop. After time in the preteen act L2M, she stepped out alone in 2018 via the reflective relationship track “Us.” The following year brought her first EP, Nen, and then her entrance on a major label arrived with the sincere ballad “See You Later (Ten Years)” in September 2021; by the arrival of a JVKE-assisted remix early the next year, the single had already drawn tens of millions of streams. Both halves of the 2023 companion set Big Dumb Heart, Chapter 1 and Big Dumb Heart, Chapter 2 appeared that year, the latter featuring the sturdy, hand-clap-driven single “It Is What It Is,” which ignited a popular TikTok dance routine.

Born Jenna Raine Simmons, she spent her childhood in Westlake, Texas; after her third-grade take on Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” at a school talent show drew strong audience response, her parents enrolled her in voice lessons. A family acquaintance steered her toward Septien Entertainment Group in Dallas, where training led to her selection as one of the young singing voices in the 2016 animated feature LEGO Friends: Girlz 4 Life alongside Mariangeli Collado, Lexi Drew, Mckenzie Mack, and Tati McQuay. The five performers then launched the Warner Bros.–backed spin-off L2M (“Listening to Music”), whose first single, the anthem “Girlz,” surfaced in January 2016; it was written and produced by Soulshock, whose earlier credits include work with Monica, Whitney Houston, Usher, and JoJo. Follow-up singles “Incredible,” “B.E.A.T.,” and “Living for the Rhythm” continued the confident, energetic tone through early 2017 and paved the way for the group’s starring roles in the live-action web series Hyperlinked as web designers and coders.

While her bandmates chased individual paths, Simmons issued her debut solo single “Us” under the name Jenna Raine in October 2018. The January 2019 EP Nen, titled after her childhood nickname “Nenna,” contained songs she co-wrote with Candice Pillay and with composer/producer Edgar Vargas (In Real Life, Bad Bunny). Later that year she supported tours by Max & Harvey and In Real Life, the latter winners of ABC TV’s Boy Band.

Her strongest streaming performance to date arrived with the September 2021 Warner Records single “See You Later (Ten Years),” followed in early 2022 by the JVKE remix. Fresh tracks continued to appear every few months, culminating in the May 2023 release of Big Dumb Heart, Chapter 1 and its more buoyant counterpart, Big Dumb Heart, Chapter 2, in August; the second volume’s “It Is What It Is” quickly became a TikTok phenomenon and her biggest hit since “See You Later (Ten Years).”