Stephanie Rainey: 'Sometimes things just don't come through, no matter how hard you work'
Songwriter and singer Stephanie Rainey at the River Lee Hotel, Cork. Picture: David Creedon
It’s been been an exciting year for Cork’s Stephanie Rainey. From an viral audition to gearing up for her first EP launch — the singer has a lot to smile about when we meet via zoom. But, it’s been a long road.
For those familiar with the industry – like Rainey who has been a working musician for more than a decade – it won’t come as a surprise that even reaching the heights of a show like America’s Got Talent and scoring millions of hits on TikTok doesn’t automatically equal commercial and financial success.
“There’s definitely been times where I wished [a career in music] wasn’t such a part of my overall happiness,” Rainey admits, fresh off a shoot with the in The River Lee hotel.
“Sometimes it’s hard when something that you love can kind of hurt you in a way, if that makes sense? When you’re doing this as a job, you’re dependent on the highs and the lows of it. Sometimes things just don’t come through, no matter how hard you work.
“It would be easier sometimes to not have this job,” she muses, “but I love it.”
Rainey’s passion for singing and writing songs started early. She credits it to her dad, who sang to her everyday.
“I think I kind of got a love for singer-songwriters because that’s what he was listening to. He would sing me songs like that,” she divulges. “Then as I grew up, I just kind of gravitated towards it. It was weird — when everyone was into like Boyzone, I was obsessed with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and Jimmy McCarthy, which was a weird flex for a six-year-old.”
But it was a secondary school before Rainey started looking at music as a potential career.
“There was one thing in secondary school that was like my ‘jump off’ moment. I sang in front of the whole school for some mass or something, and from there I never looked back. I think I just came out of my shell a little bit and I was like — this is what I want to do.”
From school performances to touring across Ireland and further afield, the singer can’t imagine doing anything else — despite joking that she’d just love a job in the bank.
The jokes are understandable. Despite being a working musician for more than ten years, and scoring a viral moment with her song ‘Please Don’t Go,’ which resulted in a record deal, she felt little was making a real-world impact.
“When I signed the deal, we kind of did nothing,” she says. “The record label thing didn’t work out.”
This all informed her decision to apply for America’s Got Talent.
“A lot of different factors kind of came into play with AGT,” Rainey explains.
“I hadn’t really considered a show like that, to be honest, but I was also having all of these mad kind of viral moments happening on TikTok. The music was going viral, but it’s really hard to cut through with that social media popularity. Even if something big is happening online, it sort of happens in a vacuum. It doesn’t translate to ticket sales or people knowing who you are.
“The music was reacting really well in America, so I thought if I could get in front of an American audience, maybe it might help the situation. Someone suggested America’s Got Talent to me, and I was like no way... but the more I thought about it, the more I was like, that’s actually the perfect thing. I could go in there as myself, as a singer songwriter — as opposed to just being in a singing competition.”
The actual audition, which aired back in June, was a cacophony of praise for the singer, with judge Sofia Vergara brought to tears.
Rainey sang her now 10-year-old track ‘Please Don’t Go’ on the day, a song very close to her heart.
The song was written about the loss of her nephew just before his first birthday, a devastating event in the singer’s life.
“It was honestly a really, really cool moment,” the singer said. “First of all, stepping out on the stage and seeing Simon Cowell, Sophia Vergara, Heidi Klum, and Howie Mendell — they’re so incredibly famous. But they were so friendly and warm when I came on the stage.
“Seeing the reaction was a bit surprising to be honest, because I didn’t know if they would get it. ‘Please Don’t Go’ isn’t a big banger of a song — it’s really about the content of the song. I was worried they wouldn’t hear it or wouldn’t actually listen to what I was singing but seeing that connection in real time was amazing. It really validated everything that I had done up to that point in that one moment.”
Though the singer didn’t make it past the quarter-final, she says she got what she wanted from the competition.
“I think in that particular competition, the main thing is the audition — and I never thought I’d go in there and win it, but obviously I still wanted to keep going. I was not happy with the performance I gave on the night of the quarter final — I was actually livid with it. It was not by any means the best I could do, and I think I had way more to offer. We had way more to show and so many great songs there that we had planned to do. It’s an impossible competition in some ways, but I definitely got so much out of it.”
The singer continued: “It’s changed things for me massively here. You know, I’ve been doing music for such a long time, and I’ve had, like, a certain level of success, but I kind of knew myself that if I didn’t do something big or something different, that it wouldn’t change, or the needle wouldn’t move.”
After the success the musician has found with the show, she is now gearing up to release her debut EP, .
“I can’t wait, it’s just so exciting,” Rainey grins. “It’s the first of a lot of music that’s going to come so it’s kind of like going back to basics, really, for me.
“I think for a long time when I was not releasing bodies of work, I was always chasing what the radio might like, what Spotify might like, etc. For this I [said] ‘Nah, drop that now. What do you actually want to say?’ And so, these songs are definitely a bundle of very chill tracks. There’s nothing in there that’s going to be a big radio banger, but I think they’re really good songs that people will relate to.
“I think at a certain point, you have to find the meaning in what you’re doing. And I think I find that people come to my music the most when I do something that’s really honest, and I can genuinely give part of myself to it.”
One song Rainey is especially excited about releasing is titled ‘Younger’.
“When I’ve played it live it has that kind of, ‘Please Don’t Go’ thing — dead quiet, some tears. I can’t get through the first verse of it without crying, because I always explain the story before I sing it.”
What is that story? Well, you’ll just have to get to a gig to hear it.
But you won’t have to wait long. As well as releasing the EP, Rainey is preparing for some of her biggest Irish dates thus far.
“We’re doing Dublin, The Button Factory — and then we’re doing Cork City Hall, which is going to be madness. I don’t even know what to think about it. It’s going to be mad, but so exciting.”
The singer is also taking to Europe with Pa Sheehy, the former frontman of Walking On Cars.
“We’re doing Germany, this year, and then next year, we’re doing the Netherlands as well, together,” Rainey beams.
“It’s all stuff I’ve wanted to do for a really long time, coming to pass, and there’s so much music there, and so much to talk about at the gigs.
“I think what I’m most excited about with the gigs is, like, we felt so much support from people here when we were doing AGT. It wasn’t a small thing that we did, in the sense that it was very nerve wrecking, it was scary. But the support we got was actually just unbelievable. So we’re just excited to go and play for the people who were sending those supportive messages. It feels like a full circle moment.”
- The Highs & Lows of it All is out November 14.
- Stephanie Rainey plays Cork’s City Hall on December 18.
- See stephanierainey.com
