After spending 10 years in Nashville trying to develop a country music career, 28-year-old Emily West finds it funny to still be called a “rising star.” More ironically funny than ha-ha funny, but the emerging talent with the booming voice and precise comedic timing hopes to have the last laugh.
If anyone in country music these days can tickle your funny bone, it’s West. Check out her West Side Stories – and her impersonations of everyone from Renee Zellweger and Faith Hill to Britney and Cher – at AOL Music or YouTube for proof. “Well, I’ve been called a rising star ever since I was eight,” she said, laughing (of course) at the very thought of her years of struggling.
Born Emily Nemmers in 1981 in Waterloo, Iowa, West changed her last name before making the move to Music City in March 2000, and has been trying to make it there ever since.
Mark down 2010 as the year. With a possible career-defining appearance on The Celebrity Apprentice (the NBC reality show that portrayed her as a “young country artist”) in April, a seat with the boys on the bus for the testosterone-filled Country Throwdown Tour that begins May 14 and her first full-length album for Capitol Nashville set for a summer release, these are the best of times for West.
During a phone interview last week, before Nashville and middle Tennessee felt the brunt of weekend storms and flash floods that resulted in numerous deaths and billions of dollars in property damage, West discussed her part on the tour and her upcoming album. She found particular glee, though, in looking back on her Celebrity Apprentice appearance and how it might have provided her career a much-needed jump-start.
“It was different being called a rising star by my hometown paper and then having Cyndi Lauper or Donald Trump calling you a rising star,” West said of her Apprentice acquaintances. “Everybody seems to be a rising star these days,” she said. “Everyone is talking about somebody, you know, with your promotion coming up or, whatever, your single coming out. Everybody is a rising star. I’m just enjoying the ride. I’m enjoying when somebody says, ‘I loved your new song. I love listening to it. It touches me.’ That’s surreal for me to have that connection between the fans. It makes me feel a little less crazy. ... I think that at this time of my life, everything seems to be a little surreal. Finally my dream is coming true.”
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