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Harper Grace unveiled a glimpse of “the personal, romantic side of my life that I really don’t share too often.”
The McKinney, Texas-born singer-songwriter debuted her new single, “if daddy says no,” on Friday (February 27). The emotional ballad is “straight out of my heart, ripped out of the pages,” Grace said in a recent interview with iHeartCountry. She opened up about a former relationship that made her feel “stuck.” Grace was caught between her boyfriend and her family, struggling to figure out a resolution.
“I was just really internally battling with that. And so, there's no resolution in the song,” Grace said of “if daddy says no,” which was “therapeutic” to write with Kyle Schilenger and Scott Stepakoff. “I remember saying out loud before we wrote it that I just felt like I was damned if I do, damned if I don’t. …Either way, I'm not able to choose the right thing. I really, really got vulnerable and wrote about that very particular story, which has been a wild experience of getting the opportunity to put it out and planning what that looks like and playing it live over the last year. It's been wild.”
'I Am Faking My Engagement': Did You Catch The 'Easter Eggs' Along The Way?
The “wild” experience of bringing the story to life included a staged engagement.
Grace announced “big news” when she posted photos flashing the stunning engagement ring last month. She’s since revealed, however, she faked the whole thing.
“I am faking my engagement today,” the country artist said in a series of videos she shared to go behind the scenes and explain why she did it. Grace said it was “the craziest situation of my entire life.”
Grace shared with iHeartCountry before she revealed the engagement was fake that she “wanted to get even more personal.” She wanted to tell a hypothetical story about how her life “could have played out (differently) if I would’ve went down the romance train, which was an engagement being called off. …It really got a lot of views, a lot of comments, a lot of likes, and captured a lot of people's attention. And in no means did I want to be insensitive to people's real engagements and real-life things that are going on, which I think is so beautiful. …I had this nightmare while dating the guy I was in a relationship with that he would proceed to ask me to marry him, and I couldn't answer. I was physically unable to. And so, with that, I thought, 'well, I'm going to play it out just like that.' So, I wore the ring for two and a half weeks.”
Grace said “everyone was shocked,” when they believed she was engaged, though she nodded to a few “Easter eggs” she’d posted beforehand to hint that the engagement was fake. She also brings the story to life in the music video, which features her father.
“I was actually still in the relationship when I played (‘if daddy says no’) for my dad (for the first time,” Grace said. “I remember him getting kind of teary-eyed… Underlying all of that hopeless romance, it's a girl who's really close to her dad, who just wants her dad's approval and wants what's right.
“He has channeled a lot of that internal frustration and that internal tension that we had had during the situation and portrayed it so well on film,” she added of her dad’s role in the music video, which also features a close friend playing her significant other. “Watching him come to life within this music video, I was a proud daughter to be able to have that experience with my dad. …I'm really glad that I not only have that on cinema to keep forever and for the fans to also see, but the behind-the-scenes moments and stuff, it was special.”
How 'if daddy says no' Brought Harper Grace Back To 'Childlike Belief' In Herself
Grace said she was “always so drawn to music,” growing up in Texas. Some of her most beloved musical inspirations include Shania Twain (who recently shared Grace’s cover of “You’re Still The One”), Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys and Aretha Franklin, to name a few. Grace remembered a moment she heard a radio DJ list the songwriters on a song that had just played, and Grace said she was instantly intrigued. Then 14, she went down a “rabbit hole,” discovering writers, producers, musicians and others who take part in the music business. “I'm finding out that there's a whole realm of the music industry that I never even knew existed,” she said. Grace took her first trip to Nashville, Tennessee, booking her own coffee meetings with industry professionals to help navigate the start of her career.
“I would tell myself to keep going and to just keep doing what I was doing, and honestly, that childlike ambition,” Grace, now 24, said when asked what she’d tell her younger self. “I think maybe I lost it a little bit in my 20s, but I am learning kind of now as I've gotten older and I've walked through different experiences. The story with ‘if daddy says no,’ choosing to revert back to that childlike inner belief in yourself and knowing that you are strong enough and capable to do anything you set your mind to. And I think as a child, because you don't know everything that's going on in the world, you have this just dream chaser ambition that is instilled within. And so, finding that, again, I’d tell her to just hold onto that as strong as she can. And luckily, I feel like I found that in my 24 years of age right now.”
Watch the “if daddy says no” music video here: