ABOUT

World, meet Tish Melton: 17-year-old singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who wears her incredibly perceptive heart on her sleeve. 

Melton chronicles teenage relationships – from the lonely pain of first love, unrequited love, friend crushes, joyous friendships, and the pain, fear and excitement of becoming an adult. She tells these stories as she’s living them, with a sharp eye for detail and lyricism that brings them to life. 

For her debut EP (coming March 1), she has teamed up with nine-time GRAMMY® Award-winning artist Brandi Carlile, who is a mentor to Melton and joins as producer. Their musical chemistry is undeniable, rooted in mutual respect, shared taste, and an appreciation for good songwriting and musical catharsis. 

When Tish was 16, she played an acoustic set at LA’s famed venue the Troubadour (where Joni Mitchell, Elton John and Carole King have all performed). Her performance was bookended by 5-person noisy bands, and she was nervous to go up on stage, alone with just her guitar. Her set hushed the entire room. A video of that performance made its way to Brandi, who instantly saw a familiar spark in Tish. Someone who was destined to sing her stories and could silence a room with them. 

Meanwhile, Tish had been making music in her bedroom for years. She got her first guitar at age 14 and spent the pandemic learning the songs of Taylor Swift and Lucy Dacus, whose clear-eyed storytelling and straightforward indie-rock sounds (respectively) she admires. She started writing her own songs (and re-writing, and re-working). “As a songwriter, I’ve realized you can just tell stories,” she says. “They don’t have to be big, dramatic moments. Personally, I learned how to write songs by simply sharing my journey and feeling how I naturally do.”

Those songs made their way to Carlile whose suspicion was confirmed – this girl has it – and she offered to produce. Together, they recorded what would become the EP during sessions in Brandi’s Seattle studio and at Shangri-La Studios in Malibu. 

Says Carlile, “Tish is so young and so brilliant. Like most lessons in life, I learned this one while I thought I was teaching it. We should guide youth in music but there’s no question that it should lead. My favorite thing was excitedly trying to explain that all the ‘new sounds’ Tish was into were actually the sounds of my city (Seattle) when I was exactly her age. A wonderful artist can plug you back into past parts of yourself you maybe should’ve stayed connected to?”