“Damn, I’ve gotten good
I’m the life of the party
You wouldn’t believe it if you saw me
I’m lookin’ damn good”
One part endless party, one part unmitigated honesty, and one part best friend who always gives it to you straight, even when it hurts, Priscilla’s debut album, Welcome to the Block Party, finds an artist who is redefining ‘three chords and the truth’ for an entirely new generation.
Though she came to prominence in 2020, Priscilla’s rise has been years in the making, full of hard work, long hours, and country grit. Originally from Raleigh, NC, she moved to Nashville to pursue music shortly after high school after being encouraged by her mom to pick up the guitar when she found one in the attic of the house she shared with her four siblings.
Priscilla was facing some misfortune during her first few months in Nashville. She was almost at her final straw when one of her idols changed everything for her. Taylor Swift drove by, spotting Pricilla wearing one of her shirts, she pulled over. “Taylor was like, ‘hey, I love your shirt so much, thanks for supporting me,’” Priscilla remembers fondly. “I went to class that night and I decided that I really needed to give music a proper shot. I quit my job and school that night.”
From then on, Priscilla dedicated every waking hour she could to songwriting. She built a close group of collaborators –including her roommate Sarah Jones –and even made a fake booking company to try and secure the band gigs around town. She played outside of Bridgestone arena during big concert nights, and “the hustle was at an all-time high,” she says, nannying, dog walking, and selling goods on Craigslist just to pay the bills. “Anything I could do was how I got by.”
Priscilla and her band were gaining some momentum when they got a brutal blow, along with the rest of the world –the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and she was stuck on lockdown. She had been writing songs nonstop before March 2020, but she’d never quite thought about sharing them explicitly on social media until the pandemic hit. Priscilla changed the Tik Tok scene when she started posting songs like “Thick Thighs” and “PMS” in the middle of lockdown.
Still, even with the success of “Thick Thighs” and “PMS,” Priscilla was still broke and broken hearted –so in the summer of 2020 she decided to go to a nearby bar where she, to add insult to injury, ran into an ex-boyfriend. A few days later, during a FaceTime writing session with friends, they wrote “Just About Over You,” and “it was the song that completely changed my life,” Priscilla says.
Soon after, Priscilla signed her record deal and was on her way to making a self-titled EP, followed by her first full-length album: Welcome to the Block Party, named for how she refers to her signature sound of country pop and southern rock that is as rowdy as it can be tender and confessional. “I write about what I know,” Priscilla says. “If that’s heartbreak or struggle or owning my flaws and being unapologetically me.”
Doing things her own way has paid off. Pegged as a 2021 Artist to Watch by Amazon Music, PANDORA, Spotify, CMT, The Boot, MusicRow, HITS, Sounds Like Nashville, Country Now, Music Mayhem and more, Priscilla’s streaming has topped 250million and rising. With Welcome to the Block Party, Priscilla rolls out the welcome mat even further, because she’s truly just getting started.
“You get the funny, you get the sassy, you get the trashy, you get the sad,” Priscilla says of Welcome to the Block Party. “You get everything that makes me, me.”
[PriscillaBlock.com]
