Charlie Berry got his first guitar when he was 11 years old. Raised in a house where music was the standard, he spent his days playing that guitar and listening to legendary artists like Jackson Browne and Fleetwood Mac.

But it wasn't until he was seated in the back of a Suburban one day that he heard "Sweet Home Alabama" for the first time and set his sights on a country-rock career.

“I had never heard ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ until that day,” Berry recalls of his first experience with the legendary Lynyrd Skynyrd hit. “I remember hearing the guitar intro and the background singers and the piano, and I think at one point I may have drooled. (Laughs.)"

"I was that entranced," he admits. "It had that kind of Southern country, rock 'n' roll feel to it that just wasn't around as much where I was growing up.”

The kid from Dallas was sold — that was his kind of music. In 2010, Berry relocated to Nashville, as you do, and picked up work writing songs and performing in various bands around town. In 2020, a significant loss in his personal life forced him to focus more clearly on where he wanted to go.

"When my dad died in 2020, it really was a line in the sand for me," the singer-songwriter explains. “Life is short, and I realized I was doing a thing that was kind of adjacent to what I wanted to be doing. There was literally no barrier between me and being an artist — I just needed to do it."

He released his catchy song "Whiskey Take It Easy" in January of 2021 as his first official Charlie Berry submission to country music. A year later, he's found solid ground with a fervent TikTok following (30K as of June 17) and a just-dropped new single called "Be Somebody" that he's really excited about.

“I actually wrote it by myself, which is a little bit rare for me and a little bit rare for a song coming out of Nashville,” Berry says of the track, which went through multiple revisions before the energetic newcomer felt he had gotten it right. "It’s not a word-for-word, personal story, but it is a very distinct feeling that I remember."

And all indications are that this is the one that going to put Berry on the map. Just ask his daughter!

“I played it for my wife and my 4-year-old daughter, and before it was through, my daughter was screaming, 'Be somebody tonight," Berry shares with a chuckle. "If a 4-year-old is catching on to the hook, country fans will catch on, too."

Follow Charlie Berry on TikTok here and Instagram here.

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