Country pop singer Kaylee Bell's new song declares: "I was made to do something more than just get by."
It's a sense the New Zealand singer-songwriter has felt since the age of four, when she began competing in country town talent quests dressed in spangly cowgirl jackets.
"I grew up in a tiny little country town and the safe option would have been to go off to uni," Bell told AAP ahead of the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
"But I always had this gut feeling that was not my path, and I've always taken the harder route."
It seems fitting Bell's new synth-pop soaked single, with Auckland singer Navvy, is called Life Is Tough (But So Am I).
Her professional career began in her teens with flat-out rejection from New Zealand commercial radio stations that refused to play country songs.
Bell packed up and moved to Australia, where she won Tamworth's Star Maker contest for emerging talent in 2013.
She has since lived on-and-off in Nashville, the country music mecca known as the "10-year town" for the time it takes artists to break through.
"Every day there is an opportunity because you never know who you're going to meet," Bell said.
"You're one degree away from someone changing your life.
"But in the same breath, there's so much talent in that town, there's a lot of politics and hoops you've got to jump through."
So Bell just keeps jumping.
She appeared on The Voice reality show singing her ode to Keith Urban in front of the man himself in 2022, with the sweet refrain, "hope you think of me when you play that Keith".
The track Keith hit number 12 on the US Billboard country digital songs sales chart in 2023, and she is the most streamed female country artist in Australasia.
Bell also lived out a dream of playing to stadium crowds, supporting Ed Sheeran on the New Zealand leg of his Mathematics tour.
At the end of a stellar year, she won the US Country Music Association's Jeff Walker global country artist award, which recognises musicians signed outside America.
"As much as I've had a lot of great success in the last 12 months, there's been 14 years of hard work underneath," Bell said.
"The award was very much a nudge: you're in the right place, you're doing the right thing, you're on the right path."
With an upcoming album and a tour in the works, Bell is also nominated for Female Artist of the Year at the Golden Guitar awards on Saturday night.
Tamworth will always be the place Bell first felt embraced as an artist.
"It felt like a big warm hug from the Australian country industry," she said.
"I hadn't had that growing up, so I get a lot of warm, fuzzy feelings when I think about Tamworth."
