How Laci Kaye Booth survived Nashville to make a killer country album
LOS ANGELES — Laci Kaye Booth clearly recalls the career path she'd envisioned in her head.
After finishing in fourth place on "American Idol" in 2019, the smoky-voiced country singer from small-town Texas promptly moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a record deal — then landed one just months later when she signed with Big Machine, the label known for having introduced music's biggest star to the world.
"I was hoping I'd get a song on the radio," she says of her ambitions at the time, "and I'd become the next Taylor Swift."
That's not the way it worked out.
Booth's arrangement with Big Machine, she says today, turned out to be "one of those nightmare record deals where they just choose everything for you." The label, according to Booth, told her what to sing and how to dress; she made a somewhat generic eight-track mini-album in 2021 that "didn't even feel like me," she says. Though it featured input by proven Nashville hitmakers including Dann Huff, Nathan Chapman and Lady A's Charles Kelley, the self-titled record sank without much of a trace, and the next year Booth was dropped by Big Machine.
"My manager at the time called me and told me she was coming over, and I knew before she even walked in," the singer says.
