Medium Exclusive First Listen: Riley Roth’s “Silver Bells”

When Riley Roth was sixteen years old, she began taking monthly trips to Nashville with her mom from their native Pennsylvania. She was enrolled in a unique program at her school that allowed her to attend classes on campus for two weeks and then travel to Nashville for two weeks to pursue her musical ambitions. She continued that cycle for a year and a half, at one point completing an entire semester of English online in one blurry-eyed weekend.

Over time, she built a network of cowriters, contacts, and supporters throughout the Nashville music community and eventually relocated to Music City after graduating from high school early. One day when she was eighteen, Roth got a call that would set everything in motion.

Hit producer and songwriter busbee had heard Roth’s music and was intrigued. busbee, though based fulltime in Los Angeles, had been making his own monthly pilgrimages to Nashville for the better part of a decade. Along the way, he amassed multiple #1 singles as a songwriter and was coming into his own as a producer, having helmed Grammy-nominated projects for Maren Morris and Lady Antebellum, in addition to breakthrough hits for newcomer Carly Pearce and established hitmakers Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood.