Courtney Hadwin is on the rise

“It’s been hard, I’m not gonna lie,” she admits. “I’m always so grateful for the opportunity that show gave me and the people who’ve found my music because of it. But it’s one of those things where I constantly feel like I have to prove I’m not just the girl from that TV show.”

It’s a few days after her 21st birthday, and when Hadwin joins the call, she’s in Benidorm nursing a hangover. In America, turning 21 is a rite of passage of sorts — a marker of adulthood and maturity. Although she is not exactly American, she has spent the last eight years with ties to the country, thanks in part to a fateful audition a then-13-year-old Hadwin had on ‘America’s Got Talent’ back in 2018

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Over the years, countless wannabe singers have passed through various singing competitions like ‘The Voice’ and ‘American Idol’, with only a handful actually making a distinct mark on music and pop culture. For the majority of those who try out for singing competition shows, it goes nowhere. Hadwin, though, stunned the judges with her interpretation of Otis Redding’s “Hard to Handle.” It would eventually become one of the most-viewed auditions in the show’s history.

Auditioning with an old classic was an obvious choice for Hadwin, as someone who didn’t gravitate towards traditional pop stars when she was growing up. Instead, the Durham-born singer felt a pull towards artists like James Brown and Tina Turner. “I’ve always loved music and it’s always been a part of me, but the moment I realised this [singing] is what I wanted to do, it was after seeing a black-and-white video of James Brown performing “I Got You (I Feel Good).” Hadwin instantly felt connected to Brown, noting how he was feeling the music more than she’d seen anyone else outwardly feel it. “I kept watching more videos and discovering new people just by scrolling the side of YouTube. That’s when I really knew this was something I wanted to do in the future.”

Still, trying to navigate a career in music with zero connections was difficult for Hadwin, even with the leg up through the show. Following the finale, she signed a record deal and shuttled from writing session to writing session with pop-leaning songwriters. “I feel like it was hard because I came off this big TV show when I was 13, and I was just kind of thrown into the deep end,” she states. “I was put into big writing camps with songwriters and producers who didn’t necessarily know my sound. I’d go into sessions and basically just be given songs I couldn’t relate to at all. It was pure Ariana Grande pop, which just wasn’t me at all.”

Shortly before her 16th birthday, the label folded, and Hadwin felt like she was in an even more difficult spot than she was before doing ‘America’s Got Talent.’ “I wouldn’t go back and change anything,” she admits. “But some days, it just makes everything harder — I feel like I have to prove myself that little bit more every single day.”

It wasn’t until she met her producer Kevin Bowe, who has credits on tracks with Etta James and Joe Cocker, that things began to click. “He really got me,” Hadwin says. “I feel like that’s when the music started to actually matter to me, songwriting-wise.” After that meeting, Hadwin and Bowe began working tirelessly on her forthcoming debut album,Little Miss Jagged, out on the 15th of September. “I’ve never written this personally before, and I’ve got Kevin, my producer, to thank for that. He really helped me get to a place where I could write so vulnerably, and I hadn't been able to do that with any other songwriters before him.”

With Bowe, she was finally pushed — encouraged to contribute and actually write alongside him, rather than just having session writers figure it out for her. It was a change — and a learning curve — for Hadwin. “At the start, I completely hated writing, I'm not going to lie,” she laughs. “My main priority was just being on stage. I love performing. I’m an entertainer. I love being in front of people and really feeling the music. That’s always been something I’ve loved. Songwriting was kind of thrown at me. It was one of those things I had to learn to love, and now it’s something I can’t live without. It’s become the only way I can properly express myself. I’m not very good at talking about my feelings, so songwriting has become that outlet for me.”

The crux of Little Miss Jagged rests on Hadwin being frozen in time — that 13-year-old ingénue that everyone wanted to mould at their own whim. “When I wrote it [the title] down, it just completely fit,” Hadwin states. “Jagged — rough around the edges, not perfect. I’ve always said I’m kind of like Marmite: you either love me or you hate me. It’s always been like that. And that title just fits the songs completely.”

One song on the album titled “You Only Love Me When I Lie” orbits around the concept of people not letting go of the image they have of you in their heads. “After AGT, everything hit me at once. Social media was a huge part of growing up, and a lot of people just wanted me to stay that 13-year-old girl. They didn’t want me to change. Even now, I’ll post something online, and people still think I’m that innocent little girl from AGT and that’s all I’ll ever be to them. I was having one of those days where I felt like, “I’m more than this,” and it was really frustrating. So again, I messaged Kevin and said, “I need to write about this.” That song probably has the rawest version of me in it. It’s very rooted in how I started in soul and blues. It’s the most soulful song on the album.”

Having older, established references and inspirations for Little Miss Jagged was a blessing and a curse for Hadwin and Bowe. When looking back at the times in sessions where she didn’t feel heard or seen, she has always known what she wanted her music to sound like. “It’s been a matter of creating music that doesn’t sound too old,” she says, noting her love for old music, like Etta James, Aretha Franklin, and James Brown. “I could go and write a song, and at first it just wouldn’t work. It was a struggle to make it relatable to the century we’re in.” With Bowe, Hadwin was encouraged to bring in a mix of everything she loves in music — the soul and the blues — and make that work in today’s world. “I’ve enjoyed every second of it.”