Tenille Townes Canadian Singer Born 1994 in Grande Prairie

Early life

Tenille Townes was born Tenille Nicole Nadkrynechny on 20 January 1994 and grew up in Grande Prairie, Alberta, where she attended Peace Wapiti Academy. Her parents and grandparents introduced her to country music through songs played on family car trips. When she was nine, she went to a Shania Twain concert holding a sign that asked for a chance to sing with the star on stage, and Twain invited her up.

Career

Townes began writing and recording as a teenager. In 2009 she released the single "Home Now", a song written from the point of view of a daughter whose father is posted to the war in Afghanistan, a subject she had learned about at school. The country musician Duane Steele produced it. Her first album, Real, came out in June 2011, and that August she performed her single "Real Me" on the national television programme Canada AM. A second album, Light, followed in March 2013, and she moved to Nashville the same year.

She began her career under her birth surname and later adopted Townes, a name taken from Township Road 722, the road where she grew up. On 13 April 2018 she announced that she had signed with Columbia Nashville. Her first single for the label, "Somebody's Daughter", appeared in September 2018. It was her first song to chart, reaching number 92 on the Canadian Hot 100, and it topped the Canadian Country chart dated 2 February 2019. In 2018 she also opened every date of the joint Bandwagon Tour by Miranda Lambert and Little Big Town, and in 2019 she sang a duet, "I Ain't Ever Loved No One", on Donovan Woods's album The Other Way.

In 2024 Townes parted ways with Sony Music Nashville, her longtime record company. The following year she worked with the Canadian country artist Nate Haller on the song "Backfire". On 27 February 2026 she announced her fourth album, The Acrobat, together with the release of its title track, which she wrote with Lori McKenna, who also appears on it. Townes recorded, produced and mixed the album herself and plays every instrument on it. It was scheduled for release on 10 April through her own label, Township Records.

Recognition

In 2011, when she was seventeen, Townes was nominated for Female Artist of the Year at the Canadian Country Music Awards. At the 2019 ceremony of the same organisation she won four awards: Female Artist of the Year, and Single, Song and Video of the Year, all three of the latter for "Somebody's Daughter".

Public roles

Townes runs an annual fundraiser called Big Hearts For Big Kids, which has raised more than 1.9 million dollars for Sunrise House, a shelter for homeless young people in Alberta. In recognition of her music and charity work, the City of Grande Prairie and Grande Prairie Sunrise House announced on 19 November 2024 that a portion of 107 Avenue would be renamed Tenille Townes Way.