Julia Golden Is Only Getting Started, And She's 'Two Steps' Ahead

Julia Golden never really had a backup plan. Performance had always been somewhere in the picture, even before country music became the clearest version of it. There were stretches where she imagined musical theater, then acting, but eventually songwriting and performing her own music became the thing that stayed. By the time she was in her teens, the path was not a question of whether she would try to pursue music, but how seriously she was willing to chase it.

“I’ve never really had a Plan B,” Golden says. “It’s always been the Plan A and the only plan I really have.”

That kind of certainty can sound unusually bold coming from someone who just turned 20, but Golden’s story is not really about having every answer early. It is about starting young enough to make mistakes, absorb lessons and slowly figure out what belongs to her.

From Carthage to Nashville

Golden grew up in Carthage, North Carolina, a small town where the kind of songwriting community she wanted simply did not exist at the scale she needed. Nashville was different. It offered writers, musicians, original-music venues and a concentration of people trying to build lives around the same obsession.

She first visited the city at 16, and that one trip altered the direction of her life. Golden eventually switched to online school, graduated early and began making regular trips back to Nashville, often about once a month. Before long, the city had become part classroom, part proving ground and part second home.

Those trips would not have happened without her family. Golden points immediately to her parents when asked who first encouraged her to take music seriously. They drove her to shows, performances and writing sessions, often piling up enormous mileage in the process. At one point, Golden says the family minivan had racked up roughly 60,000 miles in a single year.

That kind of commitment gave her access to experiences most artists do not have at that age. By her senior year of high school, Golden says she had played 240 shows. The schedule built discipline, but it also taught her how easy it is for something you love to become something you simply survive if you are not careful.

Stevie Nicks Meets Chris Stapleton

Golden has spent the last few years refining what her music actually sounds like, and the clearest description she has landed on is part classic rock, part modern country.

She calls it ’70s rock meets modern country and jokes that the easiest shorthand is “Stevie Nicks meets Chris Stapleton and then got played on country radio.”

Fleetwood Mac is a major piece of the equation. Her dog is even named after Stevie Nicks. But the references stretch well beyond one era. Golden also points to Billy Joel, Chris Stapleton, Zach Top, The Red Clay Strays, Ella Langley and Lainey Wilson as artists who have all shaped pieces of her taste.

If she had to narrow the list to three major influences, Golden says Stevie Nicks, The Red Clay Strays and Chris Stapleton. Those influences explain why her music lives just outside the cleanest definition of mainstream country. There is country in the storytelling and phrasing, but enough rock influence in the attitude and arrangement that she often describes the sound as country-adjacent.

The stranger, and maybe more accurate, description she and producer Jesse Savio have come up with is this: what if Sabrina Carpenter fronted The Red Clay Strays?

It is an unusual combination, but that is exactly what Golden likes about it. She wants the music to have recognizable touchpoints without sounding like anyone else’s copy.

Finding the Julia Golden Sound

Golden started releasing music around 17, but she says it took several years of experimentation before she felt like the songs were finally beginning to sound unmistakably like her.

“There was a lot of trial and error,” she says.

That trial and error mattered because Golden was changing just as quickly as the music. The person writing songs at 17 was not the same person writing at 20. As she learned more about herself, she became more comfortable making choices that felt less like what she thought an artist should sound like and more like what she actually wanted to make.

Her recent releases have been the first records where she feels someone could hear a track and immediately recognize it as a Julia Golden song. She considers the music coming next the truest version of herself so far. script

That identity does not mean every song lives in the same emotional lane. Golden likes range. She wants some records to make people want to go out dancing with friends, while others are meant for the kind of night where someone ends up sitting on their bed, crying and maybe calling their mom or therapist.

For her, the job is not to dictate the feeling. It is to create one.

“If you feel literally anything listening to my music, then I have done my job.”

“Meant to Be”

If someone is discovering Julia Golden for the first time, she points them toward “Meant to Be.”

The song matters to her because it feels like the point where the experimentation finally started turning into identity. Most of Golden’s solo releases have been self-penned, and “Meant to Be” is one she is particularly proud of because it represents the emotional honesty she wants people to associate with her writing.

One lyric from the second verse stands out to her:

“We’ll scream and we’ll scratch and we’ll claw and we’ll call it love.”

Golden sees that line as the emotional center of the song. It captures the contradiction of caring about someone deeply while also recognizing that the relationship may no longer be functioning like healthy love. The line came from trying to articulate that gray area, where two people may still love each other but no longer know how to make that love work honestly.

For Golden, that lyric is one of the clearest examples of what she wants her songs to do: take a complicated emotion and give it a sentence.

“Two Steps” and Letting the Music Have Fun

Golden’s next single, “Two Steps,” arrives October 2 and deliberately moves in a lighter direction.

The goal was simple: make something fun.

Golden wanted a song built for dancing, nights out and the kind of moments where nobody needs to analyze the heartbreak hiding underneath the chorus. Country music is full of sad songs, and Golden has plenty of those herself, but “Two Steps” was designed as a change of pace.

The song is about confidence, dancing and enjoying the people around you.

The production gave Golden and Savio room to experiment. They went back and forth on the arrangement until it felt playful without feeling forced, and the finished track includes little details Golden hopes listeners pick up over repeated listens.

The most obvious surprise is a saxophone solo.

Golden loves introducing sounds that are not always expected in country production, and “Two Steps” gave her the perfect excuse to do exactly that.

Savio has been producing Golden since she was 17, making him one of the most important creative relationships in her career. She also credits mixing engineer David Shivers with helping shape the sonic identity of the project. Golden jokingly refers to herself, Savio and Shivers as a little dream team, the group that has spent the last few years figuring out what Julia Golden music actually sounds like.

Nashville Is Not a TV Show

Golden loves Nashville, but she is quick to strip away the fantasy version of it.

She says outsiders often imagine the city like a television plot: someone is singing on a balcony, the right producer happens to hear them, and suddenly a star is born.

Reality is slower.

Much slower.

Golden describes Nashville as incredibly saturated, filled with talented people chasing nearly identical goals. That competition can be intimidating, but it also means the standard is high and the community is full of people who understand the work.

“They call it a ten-year town for a reason,” she says.

Success requires patience, networking, relationships and repeated effort. There is rarely one magical moment that changes everything.

Even when doubt creeps in, Golden says she comes back to the same conclusion. Music is still the thing she would choose, even if the career never looked glamorous. Bars, open mics, cover shows, whatever version of the job allowed her to keep performing would still be preferable to walking away from it completely.

“Music is what I was put on this earth to do.”

The Get Up and Learning Through Community

One of the Nashville spaces closest to Golden’s story is The Get Up, a writers round run by Savio.

It was one of the first rounds she played in town and became an early doorway into the community around her. Through those nights, she met some of her closest friends and collaborators and had the chance to test songs in front of people who were there specifically to listen.

Golden says any opportunity to share original music in a songwriting room is a privilege, but The Get Up has a personal significance because it helped turn Nashville from a place she visited into a place where she actually belonged.

That sense of community also played a huge role in another major chapter of her life: Season 29 of The Voice.

Golden says the most important thing she took from the show was not exposure. Even if her blind audition had never aired or no chair had turned, she believes the experience still would have changed her. It was the first time she had really been away from home in that way and surrounded by artists with far more experience than she had.

The behind-the-scenes relationships taught her how to connect with other musicians and gave her a much broader understanding of what being an artist could look like.

More Than the Glitter

Golden knows her visual style creates an immediate impression.

She loves fashion, gold, glitter and cowboy boots. The presentation is polished, bright and intentionally glamorous. She also knows that can lead people to assume the music will be shallow or surface-level.

She does not mind the glitz.

She just wants people to listen long enough to realize there is more under it.

“I have a lot more to say than that.”

That tension between presentation and substance is part of what makes her identity interesting. Golden enjoys the visual world of being an artist, but she does not want style to replace songwriting. The glamour can pull someone in. The songs still have to make them stay.

Onstage, she applies the same idea. Golden wants high energy and authenticity rather than a separate stage character. She believes the more fun she is having, the more easily the audience can relax into the performance too.

Her goal is for people to leave feeling refreshed, energized and like they saw a real person rather than a version manufactured for the room.

Learning to Be a Sponge

For someone who already has a significant amount of experience at 20, Golden is surprisingly comfortable admitting how much she still does not know.

She describes herself as a try-everything kind of person. She wants to make mistakes, take risks and absorb as much as possible from the people around her.

One of the biggest realizations of her current season is simple:

“I have no idea what I’m talking about. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

She does not mean that as insecurity.

She means it as permission.

Golden has enough experience to trust herself, but she is still young enough to approach each new room like there is something she can learn from it. Nashville, for her, is a place to keep absorbing information from writers, performers, producers and anyone else who knows something she does not yet know.

That attitude is part of the reason her definition of success has become less tied to numbers.

Golden says the real goal is continuing to find joy in making music, no matter what level the career reaches. After years of heavy performance schedules, she understands how quickly the grind can replace the passion that started everything.

Success, then, is making sure it does not.

Her goal is to preserve the joy even if the stage gets bigger, the schedule gets heavier or the stakes rise.

Building the Next Chapter

Golden has spent the last several months writing and recording constantly, with her immediate focus on releasing music that feels like the most authentic version of herself.

The next year is less about reinventing the project and more about moving confidently in the direction she has finally found. She believes the songs coming next will help solidify her identity and push her forward both creatively and professionally.

There are still huge ambitions attached to that path.

The Grand Ole Opry sits at the top of the venue list. Golden describes the famous circle as the “golden gates” of country music and says she has no intention of stopping until she gets the chance to stand in it.

Her dream collaboration list is long, but Chris Stapleton sits near the top. She also throws Vince Gill into the conversation without hesitation.

The calendar is already beginning to reflect that momentum. Golden says she has a November 6 headlining show in Raleigh, followed by several December opportunities, including singing the national anthem for the Carolina Hurricanes and performing as part of the iHeartRadio Rising Stars Tour in Raleigh with Shane Profitt, Cole Goodwin and Taylor Austin.

For someone from North Carolina, being able to bring that progress back home carries its own significance.

For Anyone Still Figuring It Out

Ask Golden who her music is for and the answer sounds appropriate for someone whose whole career has been built in motion.

It is for people who are still figuring things out.

Her songs move through heartbreak, growth, confidence, acceptance and uncertainty because those are the things she is living too. There is no single emotional lane because Golden does not believe people exist in one emotional lane.

“If you do not know what is happening in your life and you want to sing your way through it anyway, I think that you’ll definitely find a home in my discography.”

That honesty showed up in one of the most meaningful compliments she has received about her writing.

After performing “Meant to Be” at a writers round in North Carolina, a songwriter friend walked up and asked who she had written it with. Golden told her she had written the song by herself.

In Nashville, where co-writing is deeply woven into the culture, that assumption felt like a huge compliment. The song sounded large enough that someone assumed a room full of writers had built it.

But it had come from Golden alone.

Confidence

The word Golden chooses for the next chapter is confidence.

It may be the best way to understand where she is right now.

At 17, she was experimenting.

At 20, she has a stronger team, clearer influences, more experience and a much better understanding of what she wants her music to say.

Confidence does not mean she suddenly believes every decision will work. If anything, Golden seems more comfortable than ever admitting how much she still has to learn.

The difference is that she no longer needs every answer before moving forward.

“I am going in with songs that I feel really, really excited about and a lot more experience under my belt.”

The next decade of Julia Golden’s life is beginning at the same moment her artistic identity is starting to settle into focus. There will be more records, more mistakes, more miles, more rooms and more lessons. If the first three years have taught her anything, it is that she does not need to know exactly where every step leads before taking it.

For everything she has already accomplished, Golden still sees the story as much closer to the beginning than the end.

“Right now I want people to know that I’m only getting started.”

Music City Musicians, Issue 018: Julia Golden.

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