By Beck Gentile
Hometown Weekly Staff
Medfield’s Julia Adrian never thought she’d end up here. Adrian is a Nashville-based pop music performer and songwriter. Since the release of her debut EP, an EP with potential, Adrian has begun to make a name for herself in the Nashville music scene, performing at beloved venues like “The End” and festivals like “Musician’s Corner”. Her work blends humor and honesty to capture the complicated experience of modern life and has attracted listeners from all over the world across platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube. Now, flying high off the release of her latest EP, sorry for the lag time, Adrian is looking forward to the rest of her career as a pop artist in Nashville, while at the same time looking back to her roots at home in Medfield.
Adrian has always had an interest in music, describing herself as “one of those kids that was writing songs for my parents and performing them at every holiday”. Growing up in Medfield, she took every opportunity that was presented to further her love of music. She joined the school chorus in the fourth grade, was in her first musical in the fifth grade, and sang the national anthem at every event that she could. Medfield’s plentiful musical opportunities fostered a love for music that was always there and that kept her wanting more.
Despite this, she never planned for music to become her whole life. When she graduated from college in 2020, she planned to move to New York and pursue work as a paralegal while doing music on the side. However, after two years of this routine, she realized there wasn’t enough time for both. When she came to this realization, she reflected on which of her careers she truly loved and devoted herself to music full time. She made as many connections in the music industry as she could and eventually found herself moving to Nashville, where she worked with a producer on her first three singles. At first, she only planned to be in Nashville for a few months. She didn’t know much about the city and her specialty wasn’t country music, but after a few months of living in the city, she realized how perfect it was. She had quickly developed a community of other people in the music industry, and the city “felt like possibility”. This month marks her third year in the city, and she couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunities it has given her.
“Nashville is an incredible place to learn songwriting”, Adrian said, and living in the city and working with a number of other musical professionals has allowed her to expand her skills and love far beyond what she could do alone. It has also given her countless opportunities she wouldn’t otherwise have access to. For example, she recently became a voting member of the Recording Academy for the GRAMMYs. This has expanded her network even further, and has been just another sign she’s on the right track.
Her second EP, which was released on October 9th, has been full of even more new opportunities. sorry for the lag time has reached over 100,000 streams across the five tracks on Spotify alone in only a few short days after its release. This EP focuses on a point in her life where it felt like everything was happening at once and she was constantly apologizing for being out of the loop. Writing the EP involved reflecting on her stress and overwhelm and trying to take a positive spin on it that could help others in a similar place. Adrian considers this EP as the end of the latest chapter in her life and career. “The more I release, the more I understand the direction I go or the sound I wanna do”, she said, and now that she has a well-established discography that “feels like me”, she feels more comfortable in experimenting and expanding her sound. With the end of this chapter, Adrian is excitedly looking to the future, but at the same time reflecting on how she got here.
Adrian considers her musical background and life in Medfield as “the core” of her music. Many people love music but never pursue a career in it, and Adrian could have been the same. However, living in Medfield gave her a wellspring of different opportunities to expand her skills and perform on various stages, from musical theatre to Medfield Day. Even the English classes she took in the Medfield schools have given her the opportunity to be a better song writer, and she couldn’t be more grateful. Adrian’s life in Medfield gave her a “core of love” for music and the process of creating it that she’s sure she will take into the future chapters of her career.
