Mallory Williams Is Growing Into Her Own Sound

There is a version of Mallory Williams who always knew she was supposed to make music.

She just needed some time to believe her.

Williams has been writing songs since she was six years old. She was the only person in her family pursuing music, so there was no obvious roadmap for turning that instinct into a career. She learned guitar and piano around ten, kept writing and eventually studied the music business in college, gaining an understanding of an industry she would later have to navigate from the artist side.

For years, music could still be described as a hobby.

Then Williams moved to Nashville, graduated, looked around at people actually building careers doing the thing she had always wanted to do and made a decision.

She was going to try. malscript

Nashville Was Always Somewhere in the Story

Williams grew up in Greenville, North Carolina, but Nashville was never a completely foreign place.

Her mother was raised in Tennessee, her parents met here and Williams grew up with family connections to the area. She also grew up hearing some version of the same prediction:

Someday, if she was serious about music, she should move to Nashville.

Eventually, she did.

“I always grew up hearing, you know, ‘Mallory, you should move to Nashville someday when you grow up and do music,’” she says. “And so I did just that.” malscript

She arrived in 2020 while attending college, in the middle of a moment when building a new community was difficult for everyone.

Williams had relatives nearby, but socially and professionally, she was starting almost from zero.

That turned out to be important.

Learning to Believe the People Who Believed in Her

Williams says some of the first people who truly pushed her toward becoming an artist were the friends she found in Nashville.

She had spent years around people who viewed music as something she was good at, but Nashville surrounded her with people who understood what pursuing it actually looked like.

They encouraged her to play more.

To write more.

To get out.

To believe that wanting to do this professionally was enough reason to genuinely try.

“I feel like my friends were the ones that really pushed me,” she says. “You need to just believe in yourself and just go for it.” malscript

That confidence did not appear overnight.

Williams admits there have been multiple points when she questioned whether continuing made sense at all.

Music is difficult enough on its own. Nashville adds the unavoidable knowledge that thousands of other people are simultaneously chasing versions of the same dream.

That can create a dangerous question:

What makes me special?

Williams is learning that it may be the wrong question.

Everyone has their own reason for making music, their own sound and their own path. Comparing those paths rarely helps anyone move forward.

Playing to Nobody

One of the moments Williams remembers most clearly happened during a gig at Dave & Buster’s.

Almost nobody was listening.

Williams says becoming an artist means learning to be just as comfortable playing to an empty room as you are playing to a packed one. That night was putting the idea to the test.

She decided to record herself performing an original song for TikTok.

Then, somewhere behind her, she heard a stranger.

“Don’t give up on your dreams.”

Williams turned around.

The group told her she was talented. They told her to keep going.

It was a tiny interaction in the scale of an entire career, but that was exactly the point.

Sometimes all it takes is one person, at precisely the right moment, reminding you why you started. malscript

Country Rock With Something Real to Say

Ask Williams to summarize her sound and she keeps it simple:

Country rock.

But the influences underneath that answer stretch through multiple versions of country and rock music.

She remembers growing up watching CMT music videos and listening to older Miranda Lambert records. She points toward the grit of Southern rock and red dirt country, the power of Ashley McBryde, and the raw edges of artists like Elle King and Sheryl Crow.

What connects those influences is not simply a guitar tone or production style.

It is honesty.

Williams gravitates toward music where you can hear a song and immediately picture the story happening.

“I just love the raw kind of sound and the raw storytelling,” she says. malscript

More recently, Avery Anna has become another important influence. Williams connects with the vulnerability in her writing and the way rock textures can coexist with songs about the messier realities of life. malscript

That combination feels increasingly close to where Williams wants her own music to live.

Songs Are Where Life Goes

Williams was writing songs about heartbreak long before she had enough life experience to understand most of it.

At six years old, she would absorb stories from the world around her and turn them into songs. As she got older, observation gradually became experience.

Now, much of her writing comes directly from her own life, something she watched someone close to her experience or a lesson she had to learn herself.

The circumstances may belong to Williams.

The feeling does not have to.

She has had listeners approach her years after she wrote a song and tell her they were currently living through the exact emotion she had put into it.

That is the connection she cares about most.

“I think that everyone wants to feel seen and they want to feel understood,” Williams says. “If they can get that from my music, then I’ve done my job as a songwriter.” malscript

“Black Mustang”

If there is one song Williams wants a new listener to hear right now, it is “Black Mustang.”

The single represents more than another release.

To Williams, it feels like one of the first songs that truly points toward the artist she is becoming.

When artists begin releasing music, there can be a gap between who they know they are creatively and what they are confident enough to actually release. Williams feels like that gap is finally getting smaller.

“Black Mustang” helped unlock something.

She originally wrote it after getting out of a relationship, but she does not want the song confined to a breakup.

It is about leaving anything that no longer serves you.

A relationship.

A friendship.

A job.

A city.

A circumstance.

Even a version of yourself.

At its core, the song is about recognizing what you cannot change, choosing freedom anyway and having enough respect for yourself to walk away. malscript malscript

That idea feels particularly fitting for an artist who is simultaneously learning to stop adjusting herself around everyone else’s expectations.

Her First Radio Moment

“Black Mustang” also delivered a career first.

The song received Williams’ first radio airplay, with Q Country 92.5 FM in Arizona adding the track around its October 9 release.

For an artist still measuring success through a growing collection of smaller milestones, hearing one of her songs reach radio carried weight.

Not because it meant the work was finished.

Because it proved the work was moving. malscript

The Meaning Inside the Mustang

Williams especially loves writing lines with multiple interpretations.

“Black Mustang” gave her an opportunity to build an entire song around contrast.

In the interview, she describes one lyric using the imagery of a rare white horse against the darkness represented by the black Mustang. In her head, the song carries a broader tension between purity and darkness, good and evil, and the belief that some things simply cannot be changed.

The song ultimately lands on the idea:

You’re never going to change a black Mustang.

Listeners can decide exactly what that Mustang represents in their own lives.

That ambiguity is part of what Williams loves about songwriting. malscript

It Takes a Village to Make a Song

“Black Mustang” was not built alone.

Williams wrote it with two close friends, including Austin Miller, and the track became another example of how much she values the people surrounding her music.

Tristan Grissom helped bring the production to life as a co-producer and mixer while also contributing multiple instruments to the recording. Williams speaks about that kind of collaboration less like a transaction and more like an extension of the community she has built around herself.

“It really does take like a village to kind of make these songs come to life,” she says. malscript

That same idea keeps appearing everywhere in Williams’ Nashville story.

The Introvert Nashville Would Not Let Stay Introverted

Williams still considers herself an introvert.

People who meet her now apparently do not believe her.

Nashville changed that.

When she arrived in 2020, Williams did not have the luxury of waiting for a career or community to appear around her. She had to introduce herself. She had to network. She had to walk into rooms where she knew nobody and start conversations.

“You’re literally not going to get anywhere if you don’t just come out of your shell,” she says.

Building friendships from scratch forced Williams to become more comfortable talking to people, and it changed the way she saw Nashville itself.

Everyone is nervous.

Everyone says something awkward sometimes.

Most people are far more focused on surviving their own career than replaying whatever embarrassing thing someone else said at a writers round.

That realization gave Williams permission to stop worrying quite so much. malscript

Finding Family at Write My Wrongs

One community in particular has become important to her: Write My Wrongs.

Williams talks about the round less in terms of stage time and more in terms of the relationships surrounding it.

Through her friendship with Dalton Lee and the community he and Lane Daniels have helped create, she watched a relatively young writers round turn into something larger than a weekly event.

It became a place where people met one another.

Where friendships crossed over.

Where artists who might otherwise have stayed in separate circles suddenly became part of the same community.

Williams had been nervous when she first began taking music seriously in Nashville. She wondered whether everything would feel cliquey or aggressively competitive.

Write My Wrongs showed her another side.

“You have to have a community behind you if you’re going to make it in this industry,” she says. “They’re the ones that keep you going and push you to keep going when you don’t want to.”

For Williams, Nashville started making more sense when it started feeling like family. malscript

What Outsiders Do Not See

From the outside, the path into the music industry can look surprisingly straightforward.

Write good songs.

Play shows.

Get discovered.

Sign a deal.

Williams says reality contains a lot more steps.

She jokes about people suggesting that she simply go on a television competition and become famous, as though the only thing separating an artist from a career is finding the correct door.

The industry is full of doors.

The problem is figuring out which one opens, who has the key and whether you were supposed to go through three other rooms first.

Williams believes artists are increasingly expected to develop their own audience, branding and momentum before much of the traditional industry becomes interested. She also points out how difficult remaining original can become when everyone wants a recognizable version of something that already works.

“It’s a lot harder if you want to be the next just yourself,” she says. malscript

Sometimes She Just Looks Mad

There is another misconception Williams would like cleared up.

She is probably not mad at you.

Apparently, this has required clarification more than once.

Williams says some of her closest friends admitted that they initially thought she disliked them simply because of the expression on her face. Add a naturally monotone speaking voice and she occasionally has to convince people that, yes, she really is excited.

She finds it funny now.

Underneath the expression is someone she describes as generally happy-go-lucky and easy to make laugh.

It has even affected the way she thinks about performing.

Stage presence sometimes requires making the internal feeling a little more visible externally.

But no, she probably does not hate you.

She might just be thinking about her grocery list. malscript

Turn It Into a Song

Williams does not point to one single life experience as the thing that shaped her songwriting most.

She points to all of them.

When something painful happens, she tries to change the perspective.

Maybe it hurts.

Maybe it was unfair.

Maybe she would rather it never happened.

But Williams is a songwriter.

So part of her response becomes:

There is probably a song in this.

She jokes that when life gives her something difficult, God might simply be giving her material because He knows what she is going to do with it.

Not every difficult experience becomes meaningful immediately.

Sometimes the meaning arrives when she writes it. malscript

Becoming Unapologetically Herself

The biggest thing Williams is learning now is how to get out of her own head.

She believes she has always had a strong sense of who she is personally.

Being equally confident in who she is artistically has taken longer.

For a while, she knew the sound she wanted but worried that leaning into it might move her away from whatever happened to be popular, safe or trending.

Now she is increasingly willing to accept that risk.

“Life’s too short,” she says.

Williams has reached a simple conclusion about other people’s opinions:

They are going to have them anyway.

Trying to change yourself enough to control every reaction is impossible.

Her job is to make music she believes in.

“Not everyone’s going to like you,” she says. “You just have to like yourself and you just have to be confident in that.” malscript

That may be the most important shift happening in the Mallory Williams story right now.

“Black Mustang” sounds like growth because Williams is finally allowing herself to make the music she wanted to make all along.

Success Is Not Just the Number

Williams knows how easy it is to reduce an artist’s progress to numbers.

Followers.

Streams.

Views.

Likes.

She also knows how quickly that thinking can erase everything that had to happen before those numbers existed.

Five years ago, Williams says she would not have imagined herself living in Nashville, regularly performing, writing songs and genuinely pursuing an artist career.

Ten-year-old Mallory would probably be impressed.

That matters.

“You have to appreciate the little wins as much as the big ones.”

A room with almost nobody in it still counts.

The person who stops to listen counts.

The song that reaches someone counts.

The first radio spin counts.

And the fact that she kept going long enough to experience any of it counts too. malscript

The Listener Who Reminded Her Why

Williams recently experienced one of those smaller moments at a local gig.

The audience could have spent the evening requesting covers.

Instead, people kept asking for her originals.

One woman, there on a date night with her husband, eventually handed Williams a generous tip along with a handwritten note thanking her for the music.

Another listener told her there was something distinct and raw about the original songs and wanted to keep following what she did next.

Williams remembers those interactions because those people were strangers before she started singing.

By the end of the night, they wanted to see her succeed.

That is the part of music she does not want to lose.

The moment someone feels seen by her song can make Williams feel seen too. malscript

Music for Messy People

Williams does not describe her audience as perfect people living perfect lives.

Quite the opposite.

Her songs are for people whose lives are messy.

People who make mistakes.

People learning in real time.

People who know that the version of reality presented online is rarely the whole picture.

“We’re all just on this giant rock and we’re experiencing life for the first time,” she says.

That humanity is what Williams wants to write about.

Not everything works out cleanly.

Not everything photographs well.

Not every bad decision becomes profound.

But you learn something.

Then you keep going. malscript

What She Would Tell the Younger Mallory

If Williams could talk to the version of herself who first considered seriously pursuing music, she would tell her to believe sooner.

She has looked backward and wondered what might have happened if she had started earlier or trusted herself more.

But she is also learning not to turn hindsight into another form of comparison.

Everything happened when it happened.

The younger Mallory still eventually moved to Nashville.

She still chased it.

She still did the thing that plenty of people dream about but never attempt.

“You just have to say screw it and just do it.” malscript

Full Band, Open Road

Over the next year, Williams wants to release significantly more music.

She has talked about eventually building toward an EP or album, continuing to develop her brand and giving listeners a much larger body of work to connect with.

Beyond individual releases, the dream gets bigger.

She wants more full-band shows.

Festivals.

Concerts.

Touring.

More opportunities to get outside Nashville and find out what these songs feel like in different rooms.

There are artists she dreams of sharing stages with, but the larger goal is becoming the kind of touring musician who gets to take her own music beyond the city where she built it. malscript

The Grand Ole Opry sits on the venue dream list, while The Local remains one of the Nashville rooms she most enjoys playing because of its sound, stage and community. malscript

Growth

When asked for one word to describe the next chapter, Williams chooses:

Growth.

She recently turned 25 and jokes that she can practically feel her perspective changing.

But the word reaches further than getting older.

She wants to grow the music.

Grow the brand.

Grow the songwriting.

Grow the career.

And, maybe most importantly, continue growing into the version of herself who no longer needs everyone else to confirm that she belongs here.

Williams ends our conversation with a message that feels connected to nearly every part of her story.

“Life is about different journeys, and you need to focus on your journey specifically because if you get caught up in other people’s journeys, then you will never make it to the finish line that you want to be at.” malscript

For years, Williams worried about whether she had started soon enough, whether she was doing enough, whether her sound fit what people wanted and whether someone else was moving faster.

“Black Mustang” feels like the beginning of a different answer.

You cannot control every road.

You cannot change everything waiting at the end of it.

Sometimes you simply have to recognize what is holding you back, leave it behind and keep moving.

Music City Musicians, Issue 023: Mallory Williams.

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