At the beginning of Cole Swindell's career, the Georgia native thought he only wanted to be a songwriter. Read more about his evolution as an artist here!
As with many jobs and activities, most people have to start on the “bench” when they head out on a new career path. This certainly applied to Cole Swindell at the beginning of his country music career.
“When I moved to Nashville, my first job was merchandise,” Cole Swindell revealed during a recent press conference. “I was able to be on the road and see how it all goes down, and what a new artist has to do.” However, Cole didn’t mind standing behind the merch table making sales for other artists instead of being on stage under the bright lights. In fact, at the time he didn’t even want to be a performing artist. “I didn’t move here to be artist,” Cole said. “I fell in love with the writing part.”
Eventually, Swindell had written enough top-notch songs to be signed by Sony, which fulfilled his dream of becoming a songwriter. So, he then began singing his own songs. “I didn’t book shows. I just wrote songs every day for three years,” he said. It took fellow country music stars Luke Bryan and Thomas Rhett to convince Swindell to pursue his own full-blown country music career. “They were like, ‘Why aren’t you trying to sing these?” Cole Swindell recalls. “So I thought that maybe I should book a show just to see. I remember that first show I did, I was about halfway through when I realized that this was what I was supposed to be doing.”
“At that point, I had three years’ worth of songs that I’d been trying to get other people to record, and praying that someone would record them … and who knew that it was me that need them all along?!” he added with a chuckle. “That was a big turning point for me.”
Sometimes you just have to trust the process, and Cole Swindell couldn’t be happier with the twists and turns in his life that brought him to where he is today. “I moved here thinking I was ready for a record deal,” Swindell remembers, “but I would have screwed it up if it happened any sooner than it did.”
Be sure to share this closer look at Cole Swindell with other country music fans!