US singer Priscilla Block is taking the country music scene by storm, despite being told she will never become a star because of her weight.
To perform at Dublin’s 3Arena next month, Priscilla, 26, admits she first tried to conform to show business demands after she was told to lose weight.
The Thick Thighs singer, who received a career boost from Taylor Swift, describes herself as ‘the girl who tried and failed every diet’.
Priscilla says she has now embraced her curves and promotes positive body image, adding, “Not everyone can look like Carrie Underwood.”
In a Zoom interview from her home in Nashville, Priscilla told the Sunday World, “It’s cool that I can hope to inspire other people who want to land in country music, and let them know that they don’t have to fit in a box.
“Some see it [her curves] like a setback. I consider it an asset. It’s “hey, I can talk about things people might not talk about and hopefully inspire people along the way.”
Priscilla reveals that people in the industry pressured her to lose weight. “There have definitely been conversations saying ‘you have to lose 30 pounds if you want to get there. “Putting out a song like Thick Thighs, saying ‘this is who I am, I’m a curvy girl in country music, let’s get rid of that’, you can make it your own.
“It might be a tough thing to talk about, but I was like, ‘Hey, it’s like most of the population, not everyone can look like Carrie Underwood’.
“I think this song, I hope, helps people embrace who they are, love their bodies and love their souls. I hear that a lot. In fact, a girl told me recently that she was coming to recover from an eating disorder because of this song.
“There are stories that are really powerful, and I really had no idea it was going to do that when I wrote it.”
After years of struggling to establish herself as a country artist in Nashville, Priscilla reveals that it was the pandemic that led to her major breakthrough.
“Everyone was at home on their phones and I decided, ‘listen, if I can’t go out to play shows, I have to figure out how to use social media to my advantage and build as many fans as possible through Internet… and it worked!”
Priscilla went viral on TikTok in August 2020 with her hit song, Just About Over You, which tells the story of running into your ex.
It reached number one on iTunes’ all genre chart and landed in the Top 15 on Apple Music’s country music streaming chart in the span of two days.
Priscilla thinks the song became a hit because so many people can relate to it. It sets you back a bit.”
As her career takes off now, Priscilla, who grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, struggled to find success – and she admits she was about to wrap it up before Taylor Swift stepped in in time. timely. when the couple met by chance in Nashville.
“Growing up, I was such a big fan of Taylor Swift,” Priscilla tells me. “I’ve always been a Taylor fan. She was the girl doing it and covering country music, and she made me feel like I could do it.
“She was young, she was full of songs and I remember picking up a guitar and the first songs I learned were Taylor Swift songs.
“So I was about a year away in Nashville and my life was falling apart. That morning I had called my sister and said, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here, I’m just in falling apart.’ When I left work that day, I was wearing a Taylor Swift t-shirt.
And that day, by chance, Taylor Swift walked past me and she saw me wearing one of her t-shirts, parked her car on the side of the road and she yelled at me, ‘hey! Hey! Hey! I like your shirt!’ It was just such a big moment for me.”
The couple had a chat and Swift’s pep talk convinced Priscilla to continue following her dream. “I remember I was like, ‘Thank you very much, you don’t know what this means to me.’ From that moment on, I thought, ‘I’ll figure out how to do this’.”
Priscilla didn’t know anyone in Nashville when she arrived in town, having received her parents’ blessing to go follow her dream.
“I was an 18-year-old girl with a dream and I didn’t really know where to start,” she adds. “I was just going to go out there and do it. Like I said, I’ve been in Nashville for almost eight years and there’s been a lot of ups and downs that almost broke me along the way, but I finally succeeded.”
Priscilla’s album, Welcome to the Block Party, is out now. She plays C2C at the 3Arena in Dublin on Sunday March 13.
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