Marielle Kraft, an indie pop singer-songwriter from Philadelphia, grew up loving musicals. Her earliest memory of performing was in the third grade talent show. She sang her own rendition of “Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music. “It’s so memorable because I was learning how to play the piano at the time. And I remember not being able to multitask, playing and singing at the same time. So instead, I played the melody riff with one hand on the piano. I stood up and had my music teacher cue the track and then I stood in front of the mic and sang the rest of the song.” She fell in love with The Sound of Music as a kid; it was one of three DVDs in the minivan.

Marielle got a guitar for her 13th birthday, and wrote her first song soon after. She was really falling in love with Taylor Swift at that time. She was very inspired to be a young songwriter, to write about her life in as much detail as she could gather about her crushes and other things that might be important to a 13-year-old girl. The first song Marielle wrote was about being late to school because I didn’t have any relationship experience at the time. Essentially the song was about being late to school, not remembering the combination to her locker and getting a detention because she was tardy.

“I think I got a guitar as a mode to support singing and songwriting. It wasn’t really that I wanted to learn guitar as a guitarist. I just knew that the musicians I looked up to did both. They wrote the chords to support the lyrics and the melody. And to this day, that’s mostly my songwriting process: lyric and melody first, and then how does the music support that.”

In high school and a lot of college, Marielle mainly focused on being an athlete and music was just a fun hobby on the side. She went to the University of Delaware where she studied English. Once she graduated she began working as a full-time 6th grade English teacher, just outside of DC. Meanwhile, she nurtured her passion for songwriting without any pressure, because she wasn’t trying to make it a business, monetize it, or go to school for music. “Where the stakes were super low. And I could take risks, and I could try things, and I could find my voice on stage. And that definitely helped create my career”.

On the weekends she’d go out of town up and down the East Coast (Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania) and play gigs for extra cash. “I think it was a really helpful transition for me, unknowingly, at the time. To be able to balance both, being a full-time teacher and part-time musician. Now as a full-time artist, I feel like I have these skills that I didn’t even know I was building”.

Transitioning from being a cover musician to an artist career took years, and it wasn’t exactly seamless. For one it was hard to let go of the steady paychecks that you get playing cover gigs. But it was draining and holding her back from building her artist career, so she dropped her cover gigs incrementally. She credits her booking agent Ben, for giving her the confidence to make the jump, he was, and still is invested in her career.

Marielle had started taking trips down to Nashville to meet people and songwriter with other artists in 2019. She’d seen what Nashville was all about before the world shut down because of Covid. Cautiously, She moved to Nashville at the tail end of 2020. Most sessions were still over zoom, but she was able to establish herself in the scene.

“Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about finding balance in my late 20s and what that looks like for what my life is, you know? Like, now I have the person that I’m going to be with for my life. I have the house. I have a career that I’m in the midst of building up and it feels secure for probably the first time ever. In classic songwriter mentality, I am trying to not self-sabotage and poke holes in what is going well right now, and how my life is good right now. A lot of times, I’ve fallen into this idea that you have to kind of be suffering or in turmoil or going through heartache to write incredible music. And I’ve been challenging myself lately to write about that. This place I’m currently in, which is security in my love life, security in my home, excitement about my future rather than fear.”

Follow Marielle on Instagram.