Sherrie Austin Introduces Circus Girl

Sherrie Austin’s first new music in eight years, the full-length album Circus Girl, is in stores today (11/15).

Included on the album is “Naughty or Nice,” a holiday duet with songwriter Shane Stevens, who also co-wrote Lady Antebellum’s “American Honey.” Austin and Stevens are real-life best friends and appear in the song’s video experiencing different Christmases on opposite sides of the globe. GAC is also featuring the clip in its On The Street segments, and AOL’s The Boot is offering an exclusive free download of the title track here.

Austin previously scored hits with “Streets of Heaven,” “Never Been Kissed,” and “Lucky In Love,” before landing roles in theatrical productions like Bonnie & Clyde and Ring Of Fire–The Johnny Cash Musical Show. More recently, she proved her abilities as a songwriter with cuts by Trace Adkins, Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw and George Strait. Her experiences as a songwriter helped inform the female-empowerment themes of Circus Girl.

“The last few years I had been complaining about that fact that there weren’t any females speaking to women above the age of 30, so I started thinking about how I was writing my songs and came up with the idea for ‘Friday Night Girls,’” says Austin. “I wanted to write a three minute song with every Sex and the City episode that had ever existed, so I did. I quickly noticed that the women in my audiences loved it and so I switched my songwriting focus for a while to concentrate on that audience, who are my peers, to speak to them.”

Austin and Stevens also appear together in the upcoming Sundance Channel reality documentary series Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys, about women and their gay best friends. The series premiere is Friday, Nov. 18 at 8 pm CT.