The Spice Girls may have lost their multi-platinum prowess, but girl power is very much alive in Starkville. On Friday night at 6 p.m., Starkville High School senior Brandi Shurden will open for the free Montgomery Gentry concert at Mossy Oak in West Point. Although she is barely old enough to vote, Shurden has recently made a name for herself, opening for country stars such as Andy Griggs and Exile.
Shurden has been performing professionally for two years, but singing was simply a natural stage in her development, shortly after her first steps.
“Ever since I could talk, I’ve been singing,” Shurden said. “I was an ugly kid. I had this big cowlick in my hair, and I’d be running around the house singing Debbie Gibson songs into a Coke bottle.”
The cowlick may be gone, but Shurden has since found a new way to sabotage her hair.
“I have a tendency to swing my head around on stage,” Shurden said with a laugh. “By the time I finish the show, my curls are flat as a board.”
Bad hair days aside, Shurden’s career has progressed steadily, thanks to some local exposure.
“I was singing on the Kay Bain Morning Show on WCBI,” Shurden said. “Gene Simmons (a music producer) saw the performance and asked for a demo tape. I just got a lot of good breaks since then.”
In July 2000, Shurden released her debut album, It’s A Girl Thang. The album was partially recorded at the Comanche Studio in Nashville under the tutelage of her new manager/producer, Billy Ray Reynolds, who is best known for his work with Tanya Tucker.
With a little help from On Cue, Be Bop Records and 96.1 FM, Shurden sold 3,000 copies of It’s A Girl Thang in the Starkville area.
Shurden’s hour-long sets often include cover songs from the likes of Shania Twain and Patsy Cline, but there is one song in particular that gets the crowd jumping.
“I get asked to sing ‘It’s A Girl Thang’ a lot,” Shurden said. “For some reason, the kids really love that song. I like it, but I’ve done it so much, it’s gotten old. Now it’s just like, whatever.”
Although she is already an accomplished performer, Shurden is not content with merely singing other people’s songs.
She wrote two songs on It’s A Girl Thang and plans to write three more for her next album. But like any up-and-coming artist, Shurden gets by with some industrial savvy.
“I’ve got songwriters in Nashville who keep sending me stuff,” Shurden said. “My producer said he’s got three songs that could hit No. 1.”
Shurden graduates in December from Starkville High School.
Afterward, she plans to move to Nashville and begin work on her second album. Shurden said she has two prospects interested in signing her, a luxury she did not have when It’s A Girl Thang was distributed independently.
However, if the hands of fate thwart Shurden from the spotlight, there is always the dental industry.
“If music doesn’t come through for me, I would love to go to State (Mississippi State University) and study to be an orthodontist,” Shurden said. “And if that happens, I really can’t complain. I’ve already accomplished more in the last three years than a lot of people do in their lifetimes.