Nicolle Galyon: 'The Voice' Gave Me Courage

To mark the return of NBC’s The Voice tonight (Sept. 22), MusicRow checked in with former contestant turned hit songwriter, Nicolle Galyon. She appeared on the show’s second season in 2011, and says the experience changed her career.
Since then, Galyon has gone on to win the 2014 MusicRow Breakthrough Songwriter of the Year, and is currently vying for the CMA Award for Song of the Year as a co-writer of Miranda Lambert’s hit “Automatic.”
Galyon moved to Nashville about 12 years ago to attend Belmont University. At the time, she was a classical pianist but didn’t have much experience singing in public or writing songs. “I became a singer out of necessity,” she says, adding that she was “insecure” about her voice and performing.
Competing on The Voice pushed Galyon out of her comfort zone. Here’s her story:
“Sometimes I think I have more courage than I have sense. I’m really ambitious and also really scared of a lot of stuff. I knew that by how much The Voice scared me, it was something I needed to do for myself. I needed to get out there and see what I was made of. And when I came back from doing The Voice, I felt like I’d been carrying a 100 pound weight on my shoulders because it was so nerve-wracking. When I got back to Nashville, I hit the ground running because I thought, ‘If I can do that, I can do anything.’ That’s how I started operating (even if I didn’t recognize it). I was on fire to write songs, and more passionate and inspired about songwriting than ever before. It’s a crazy thing, because The Voice has nothing to do with songwriting, but it had everything to do with me learning to be more courageous in my career. The Voice will always be a cornerstone of faith for me. So it gives me the courage to keep showing up, even to co-writes that I feel nervous about or situations that scare me. You have to take some chances. I didn’t win on the show, but I feel like I won in a bigger way. Today I feel like I have the confidence to own my voice as a singer. I’ve always been confident that I had something to say.”