Laura Bryna is best known for her holiday hit “Wishlist,” but her latest single “Rise,” a duet with singer/songwriter Common Tribe, is a ballad about hope and resilience. She says when she and her co-writers finished it, they knew it was special.
“We all just kind of turned around and looked at each other and was like, ‘I think we have something,'” Laura tells ABC Audio. She notes, “When I sat down to write with them, I was like, ‘I want a song that everybody can relate to.’ Y’know, we’ve all faced adversity in our life. We’ve all gone through ups and downs and different things. And it’s really all about how we pick ourselves up and get through all the yuck in our lives.”
After starting the song, Laura asked Common Tribe to write the second verse and sing on it.
“He’s just got this cool, soulful, gritty kind of sound,” she says. “You hear the emotion of both of us. … it was kind of like he and I going back and forth off of each other saying, ‘We got each other. We’re going to get through this.'”
Laura’s heard from plenty of fans who’ve been helped by that message. “As an artist, as a songwriter, if you help one person or you touch one person’s heart, then you’ve really done your job,” she says.
She adds she still finds it surprising to hear “Rise,” which is a country song, on the radio between, say, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift.
“It takes me a moment because I…like, ‘I feel like I know that.’ And then I’m like, ‘Oh!'” she laughs. “I’m huge fans of all of them. So to be in the [same] place with them is just absolutely incredible.”
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