Nashville-born and Alabama raised singer and songwriter Jessie Murph is only 18, but she’s already proving to be a force to be reckoned with.
Murph, performed at Hangout Fest nearly two weeks ago, fresh off the heels of her first headlining tour, which completely sold out and included a stop in Huntsville, one of two cities she was raised, in addition to nearby Athens.
“That was the craziest show ever,” Murph said of her show at Mars Music Hall in an interview after her Hangout Fest performance. “Just to see the people I grew up with there, it was wild. Very surreal.”
Though that show was crazy for Murph, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses growing up in Athens. She talked fondly about her favorite area hole in the wall, a coffee shop named Angel’s Island Coffee, but Murph told Flaunt that the people there didn’t find things that she would sing or put in TikTok videos acceptable.
Some of those things included cursing and talking about body positivity, among other things, according to her.
“The whole town, it was hard for them to accept it,” Murph said. “Especially being a female who was saying the things I was saying in songs and TikToks, they didn’t think it was acceptable. That was rough because I could see dudes doing it, but I couldn’t do it? So unfair.”
Murph added that besides sports, being a singer was all she’s ever wanted to be.
“I literally have notebooks from when I was a little kid, of pages of words. I guess I manifested it,” Murph said.
Alabama native Jessie Murph performs on the Shein Surf Stage at Hangout Fest 2023. (Tandra Smith/tsmith@al.com)
Murph clearly doesn’t harbor too much resentment for the Athens-Huntsville area, or Alabama for that matter, as she made it a point to tell the very sizable crowd gathered for her 2:30 p.m. set that this was her home state and she was happy to be here.
She then launched into a song that drew screaming and crying among the crowd. The crying is anything Murph isn’t used to. Most of the song clips she posts on her social media platforms allude to being heartbroken, unrequited love and even in one such song, darker themes like being taken advantage of.
You’d be hard pressed to find dry eyes in any of her concert recaps on her social media platforms, which includes 9.2 million (and counting) followers on TikTok and a combined over 1 million on various other platforms, including Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Alabama raised Jessie Murph poses for a portrait at Hangout Fest on May 21, 2023. (Tandra Smith/tsmith@al.com)
Simply put, Murph is great at being sad.
It might as well had been a stormy night instead of the sunny one a few Sundays ago as she sung, but her talent shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody who has grown up in the Huntsville area — Muscle Shoals is just under two hours away, after all.
She’s already been rewarded handsomely for her talent. Murph’s single “Nothing Else Matters” is featured last on the “Fast X” soundtrack, which includes other high-profile names like Skrillex, Lil Durk and Kodak Black. She expressed her excitement to be included in the “Fast and Furious” franchise on her TikTok page and doubled down on it during the interview.
“I’m still trying to process it,” Murph said. “They told me about [the opportunity] and I remember being super anxious and thinking, ‘Oh that’s cool, but it’s probably not going to happen,’ and then it happened.”
That’s not the only thing happening for Murph. She just recently announced her second headlining tour, which begins in New Orleans and includes a Birmingham stop on Sept. 15.
Along with her looming fall tour, Murph’s future plans include more festival appearances at Lollapalooza in Chicago and Outside Lands in San Francisco, as well as more new music and one day, a trip across the pond for international dates.
“A lot shows. A lot of music. Some of my favorite music yet,” Murph said. “I can’t wait.”
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