Why Country Singer RaeLynn Calls Marriage Her ‘Biggest Rebel Move’
By Movieguide® Contributor
For country singer-songwriter RaeLynn, boldness has been a driving force behind many of her decisions, even at the risk of losing her career and those close to her.
“My dream, you know, as a young girl was to fall in love young. Have a bunch of babies. You know all of us be on the road you opening the bus door and Fisher Prices falling out…that’s the dream,” RaeLynn revealed on PragerU’s STORIES OF US.
After her time as a contestant on Season 2 of THE VOICE, her career started to take off, and she soon met her now husband, Joshua Davis, at church. When she told her record label at the time her plans to marry, they discouraged it.
“They told me that I was crazy. They were like, you know you need to be available. You need to be single,” the singer said.
Against her label’s wishes, in what she called her “biggest rebel move,”she got married at 21, and the couple now have a 2-year-old daughter, Daisy. And she has no regrets.
“I’m so thankful that God gave me my person really at a young age,” said RaeLynn. “I needed a solid person in my life.”
“Look, I’ve been married for eight years. And what if I would have listened to you? Look at this happiness that I found. Look at this security I found in a human being. I would have never had that,” the 29-year-old said.
She went on to say, “When I get older, and all this has gone. And I’m rocking on a rocking chair with my husband on a back porch, hopefully on a bunch of acres. It’s not going to be the music that I put out. The legacy that I leave behind is through my children.”
She says that motherhood, instead of hindering her creativity, has helped her and made her bolder in stating her convictions.
“Being a mom doesn’t make you less than. Being a wife doesn’t make you less than. Children don’t devalue your life. They add value to your life,” RaeLynn said. “[Having a child] was a big reason why I felt more comfortable being more open about my beliefs because if I’m silent, what does that tell you?”
Her convictions about motherhood also come from her own mother choosing to keep her when she found out she was pregnant with Raelynn under less-than-ideal circumstances, which she wrote about in the song “She Chose Me.’
“My mom, she was married. They were split up. She met my dad, and she got pregnant with me,” the Texas native recalled. “And at the time, I think her and her husband were thinking about getting back together because they have four children together. I mean, they’ve been married for 12 years at the time she was considering [having] an abortion. The quick fix is, ‘Hey, I’d rather not have this kid’ and make sure our family unit stays together or have this child, and she’s kind of on an island by herself.”
Part of the lyrics of “She Chose Me” read:
If it went the other way, nobody would have blamed her
Think of all the small town talk it would have saved her
She could have chosen one quick fix
To get her out of one big mess
She could have tied a different ribbon to the ending of the story
Could have kept her secret, gotten out before it
Changed her life, she could’ve changed her mind and changed everything
But she chose me
RaeLynn was initially hesitant to release the song but felt the message was too important not to.
“I really do believe that God gives you a platform for a reason,” RaeLynn said. “And so we released ‘She Chose Me’ within I think two weeks there was over 750,000 videos made between Tik Tok and Instagram and all these different platforms of women telling their stories of how they chose life.”
But the song didn’t come without backlash, and the singer believes it’s indicative of the larger cancel culture.
“I’ve always unapologetically loved Jesus, love America, been an advocate for life and the music industry now, it’s scary because everybody’s like tiptoeing around each other,” she stated. “People are nervous to say anything and I’ve felt it when I put out ‘She Chose Me.’ Friends that have been my friends for ten years were not my friends anymore because I released a song about my story.”
“You should never silence a person to speak and write what they want to write about,” she added. “I think music’s gonna be a big part of the awakening in America. Where we’re gonna break those barriers is continuing to write songs that change the narrative, continuing to tell our stories.”
RaeLynn recently was awarded the Mothers of Influence Award by the conservative political action group Moms for America, where she spoke on the legacy that she wants to leave her daughter.
“I want my daughter to be someone who is proud of her beliefs, stands up for what is right, has faith in God’s greater plan and respects herself enough to say what is on her heart and the only way she is gonna do that is by her Dad and I leading by example and standing up for her while she is growing up,” she posted on Instagram.
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