Tenille Arts has been making circles around this town for a minute. Whether her brand of pop-country is your cup of tea is inconsequential when it comes to her new song. She leans fully into her country roots with “Unbecoming,” a soft, emotional meditation about her self-worth. “But I ain’t the pageant queen that you wanted me to be, I’m sick and tired of running,” she sings.
She then laments the time she wasted trying to be the person others wanted her to be. “The girl who would smile to try and hold the tears / Held that shit in for years, she disappeared,” she sings, before admitting she now stands “in the mirror, and I like me better with all of my tattoos / I wear ’em like the truth / I wish you knew that I’m not doing this to you.” With a trembling guitar behind her, Arts allows every ounce of her confession to feel like a two-ton anvil. It’s that lyrical weight that makes the song appear among the year’s best country tracks.
“This song means so much to me, and it’s the start of something so special that I can’t wait to share with you,” Arts writes on Instagram. “Every version of myself is in these lyrics, and hopefully you see yourself in them too. Here’s to unbecoming together.”
Listen to “Unbecoming” below.
Photo via Tenille Arts Facebook
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