Singer and songwriter Brittney Spencer is seeing her star rise in big ways these days: praise from the Highwomen, spots on artists to watch lists and a general widening of her fanbase and the opportunities available to her. If you ask her mother, it was always her daughter's destiny.

"She always knew that I was going to sing," Spencer tells actor and singer Chrissy Metz of her mom on Apple Music Country's Country Faith Radio. "She tells me all the time, she said God told her when I was a kid that I wouldn't be with her for a long time. I wouldn't stay there in the city ..."

"She believed I would do country music before I had the courage to even pursue it," Spencer shares. "She got me a high school class ring, and on one side was a cowboy hat and the other with some cowboy boots … My mom bought me my first pair of cowboy boots. She's just always been on board ... She knew it before I did."

Spencer's whole family, really, has "always been on board," she notes: For example, the Baltimore native's father always made sure she had the money she needed for a bus ticket to her next audition.

Spencer has been in Nashville since 2013, and has been a backup singer for, among others, Carrie Underwood, while building her own career as an artist and a songwriter. After teaching herself to play guitar upon her arrival in Music City, Spencer started busking downtown, too.

"I learned a whole lot about myself and other people, too," she says of the experience. "It was a good time ... I'm glad I did it."

Spencer released her debut EP in late 2020, and earned a shoutout from Maren Morris during her CMA Female Vocalist of the Year acceptance speech that November.

"I've never expected an artist to see a video I've posted. I do this stuff for fun. I love it. And so I was just completely shocked when Amanda Shires and Maren Morris ... invited me to come and sing with them," Spencer tells Metz of having the Highwomen see her cover of their song "Crowded Table" and reach out to her. "It still blows my mind. I'm just in a constant state of shock."

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