LOS ANGELES, CA- Beneath the red lights of Los Globos on a warm May evening, country-pop trailblazer Brooke Eden did more than launch a single—she led a glitter-dipped, line-dancing declaration of queer joy. On the surface, it was a release party for her new single, “Giddy Up!,” but in practice, it felt like a honky-tonk revival soaked in rhinestones and radical self-acceptance.
Clad in sequins and radiating a confidence hard-won over a decade in the Nashville trenches, Eden’s presence onstage was a revelation. “I grew up singing in a honky-tonk band with my dad,” she told me before the show. “The line dancing community—that was home. I learned my first line dance when I was five.”
That early influence echoes in the DNA of her latest release. “When we wrote ‘Giddy Up!,’ I actually had a completely different idea in mind,” Eden said. “My now producer, who I was co-writing the song with at the time, he just started playing that fiddle that starts out the song. And for me, that was like, damn, what did you just do?”
The fiddle became the ignition point. “That is the thing about country music that I love. I love a steel guitar and I love a fiddle. And I love the very country elements. But then I also love the pop beats,” she said. What followed was a songwriting process unconstrained by genre limits: “We kind of took away all the boundaries that we had before and just said, what do we want to dance to and what will make us move?”
The result is a genre-blurring sound she laughingly dubbed, during our chat, as “honky-tonk giddy-up.”
Eden’s performance that night went beyond the lead single. She previewed several unreleased tracks from her upcoming project—some with honky-tonk flair, others more balladic. “One of them is very much a ballad. It’s more like a story. And then the other one is a little more honky-tonk,” she explained. “A little bit of honky tonk, a little bit of dance. That’s who I am.”
But Eden’s artistic evolution is as much about identity as it is about sound. “I feel like I’m constantly evolving as an artist. And just getting truer and truer to who I really am. As an artist and as a human,” she said. “When I first moved to Nashville, I very much was like, I’ll be whoever they want me to be. And now I’m the complete opposite. I’m like, I will be exactly who I am. And I will make no apologies for that.”
Her coming out was a personal milestone wrapped in professional risk. “When I met my wife, that was in late 2015,” she recalled. “It very much was a time when everyone was fearful because Shelly Wright had come out not long before that and so did Ty Herndon. And they will tell you they were very much excommunicated from the country music family.”
The tide began to shift in 2020. “People started realizing that life is so short and why are we hiding some of the most important parts of who we are?” she said. For Eden, authenticity became not just preferable, but essential. “Being an artist is all about authenticity and telling your truth. And I’m finally getting to do that now.”
Social media has played a crucial role in her ability to control the narrative and connect with fans. “The fans are holding the keys more than the gatekeepers these days,” she said. “TikTok and streaming are telling radio what they want or are telling festivals what they want. And I think that that holds a lot of power for artists.”
Her commitment to social media is strategic. “I’ve been putting music out since 2016, and I cannot tell you how many people have been like, oh, yeah, I just found your music. And I’ll be like, oh, what’s the first song that you know? And they’re like, oh, ‘Outlaw Love,’ which came out two years ago. And that’s because that’s when I started posting to TikTok.”
Even though building that online presence is time-consuming, it’s more sustainable than the old-school radio grind. “I went out on a radio tour and went to 165 country music stations around the United States,” she said. “If I can spend a little more time at home working on editing posts and a little less time out on the road away from my family, I would rather do that with a baby sleeping on my chest.”
When asked what her younger self might say about her current life, Eden paused for a beat before responding: “I think she’d be shocked that I was singing about a woman so freely and openly and brave, like boldly. Thirteen-year-old me was so scared of being myself because I was so afraid to learn who that was. And me now is like, I am so proud of who I am and excited to grow and learn more about life.”
“Giddy Up!” seems to mark a new chapter in her ever-evolving story. A night that wasn’t just about a single, but a homecoming. A full-circle moment in boots and glitter.
And the story doesn’t end here. With appearances slated at Glowdeo in Austin, The Basement East in Nashville, and a high-profile slot at WorldPride DC’s Closing Ceremony, Eden’s 2025 calendar is packed.
But if there’s one set I’m personally most excited for, it’s June 1 at OUTLOUD Fest during WeHo Pride. If Los Globos was a warm-up, OUTLOUD promises to be a main stage moment that solidifies Eden as a must-see live act.
Brooke Eden isn’t just reshaping country music’s sonic boundaries—she’s expanding its heart. And that heart beats loud, proud, and to a rhythm that invites everyone to dance.
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LIVE CLIPS
Brooke Eden Spurs a Queer Country Revival at Los Globos with “Giddy Up!”
