About the Artist
Abigayle Oakley is a Las Vegas-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter who calls her sound "existential indie folk," music for figuring out your twenties when you don't have the answers. A Belmont University graduate, she built her catalog by challenging herself to write a hundred songs a year, and recently turned three chairs on NBC's The Voice, landing on Team Kelly. She releases music as singles in a waterfall rollout, with an EP made alongside Anthony DeCosta on the way. Her songs tend to work like mirrors, taking overthinking, self-doubt, and the search for meaning and handing back something steadier.
Abigayle Oakley
About the Episode (Episode 125)
Abigayle Oakley: Still Figuring It Out, and Singing About It
Abigayle Oakley sat down with Jason English at the 2026 30A Songwriters Festival, her first time at the event, with the Gulf coast behind them and a run on NBC's The Voice still ahead of her. She is at the point in a career where things move fast, and the conversation kept landing on the same thing she writes about: how to keep reaching for what is next without missing what is already here.
Key Conversation Points
Songs about not having the answers. Oakley calls her music "existential indie folk," written from the middle of figuring out "why am I here on this spinning rock." For several years she wrote a hundred songs a year, which made her less precious about any single one. "Worst Gaslighter" came out of her habit of overthinking, and writing it left her with a reminder she now sings back to herself every show: be kinder. "Every song is a mirror," she says.
Showing up for the room. She moved to Nashville having never co-written, hated it at first, and became a constant co-writer once she found people with a complementary songwriting philosophy. She leans on Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way and the old idea of a genius that lives in the walls: not a person, but an energy that rewards you for showing up. Some days the magic is there and some days it isn't, and either way the job is to sit down and listen.
Love, plans, and a thrifted fleece. "Hazel Eyed Lover in Patagonia" is not about the place. It is about a Patagonia fleece her fiancé Tom thrifted from Goodwill, and it opens with her being tired of trying to be a rockstar. Recently engaged and with no backup plan, she believes the way to a life ten years out is to make today look as close to it as possible: creative freedom, work she chooses, and enough to support the two of them.
Asked what she is most curious about, Oakley did not pick an industry milestone. She wants to know how anyone keeps moving toward what they want while still being satisfied with where they already are. It is what she keeps writing about, and it points back to what she hopes people take from her songs: that the world is still a benevolent place, and that the bravest thing she can do is keep showing up as herself.