We don’t know about you, but personally, we always love a good success story, which is how we came to be interviewing 22-year-old artist Kaylan Arnold. For those of you unfamiliar with the name, Arnold is a young singer and songwriter based in Miami, Florida, who spends her days making sweet tunes for your entertainment. You may have heard her on iTunes, SXSW, or at the famed Cabana Festival in Hawaii. If you haven’t, worry not, for you’re bound to be listening to her by the end of this article.
Not only is Kaylan Arnold a skilled musician, but she also has an impressive story to tell, which is what makes us admire her even more. Ask any artist, established or up-and-coming, about what the hardest part in making it in music is, and they’re bound to tell you it’s starting out. Why? Because making it in music is such a distant dream, it seems near impossible when you’re a young kid barely getting the hang of things. Also, because there are X roads ahead of you, offering more success than this one, and it’s really easy to pass up the musician life altogether, in favor of something more secure.
Take Kaylan Arnold, for example. As a high school student, Arnold thought she had the rest of her life figured out. As a keen basketball player and a highly talented one at that, it seemed evident to her that her future would be in shooting hoops with some of the big leagues. All signs seemed to be pointing her in that direction, and her obvious talent for the sport made her feel fairly secure about her success as a basketball player.
Still, something was missing. More and more, Arnold found herself missing practice to attend recitals and rehearsals, which slowly took its toll on her mentally until she finally found herself torn between her two main passions – basketball and music. On the one hand, she had this opportunity in sport, toward which she felt more confident, more secure, more encouraged. And on the other hand, here was this one-in-a-million shot. Always a sharp young woman, Arnold realized the difficulties that lay ahead and the near impossibility of making it in the music business. Go for the hoops, everyone seemed to say.
Yet a part of Arnold couldn’t come to grips with that being her future. In the end, finding herself more drawn to the recitals than the basketball practice, she set down the ball (at least temporarily), and thought, for the very first time, about seriously trying her hand at music. It would be this daring, this almost insane level of courage that would come to mark her music, now loved by so many, both in America, as well as internationally.
An artist with a lot to give, Kaylan Arnold chose music even when it seemed impossible, and now, having played some of the best gigs in the country and with an immense list of opportunities at her feet, it seems she made the right choice.
CHECK OUT HER LATEST VIDEO FOR HER HIT SINGLE “PRAYED UP”
