Break Music

Kellie Pickler

Just two weeks before the release of her debut album, Small Town Girl, Kellie Pickler was still unpacking boxes in the decidedly uptown condominium she had leased in Nashville, her new hometown. “I came across photos from when I went to audition for American Idol, when I was standing in line with all those thousands of people in Greensboro. I just started crying. I couldn’t believe how things had changed in a year, and how unreal it seemed to be where I am.” The journey that took Kellie Pickler where she came from to where she is today is one of beating the odds, digging down deep, holding onto dreams, and testimony to the enduring power one person’s love can have. Even before she made it to the finals of the fifth season of one of the most influential televised talent shows ever, signed a contract with 19 Recordings/BNA Records, criss-crossed the country with the American Idols Live! Tour 2006, Pickler has triumphed over what could have easily been her destiny. “There’s a difference in running from your problems and overcoming them.” Kellie’s somewhat twisted fairy tale begins at the Stanly Memorial Hospital on June 28th 1986, in Albemarle, North Carolina, a small town 45 minutes from Charlotte. When her parents split up and her mom left, Clyde “Bo” Pickler, Jr. he was left with a two year old baby girl. When he was drinking or doing drugs, she lived with her grandparents, Faye and Clyde Pickler, Sr. He was an electrician, and worked long hours. Her grandmother, stricken with arthritis, became the one person Kellie could count on, My Angel as she would years later immortalize her in the song she wrote with Aimee Mayo and Chris Lindsey. “My grandmother and I would bake cakes, plant flowers in the spring and bulbs in the fall. She loved daffodils, and they are my favorite flower too, they are so sunny and cheerful. She had a collection of children’s books, and one of those was a songbook. We would sit on the swing on the front porch, and I would just sing my heart