Bio

A 22-year-old singer/songwriter hailing from Cleveland, maryjo has the kind of unforgettable voice made for heart-melting piano ballads. But while her songs show a phenomenal vocal command—often drifting from full-throated belting to a gorgeously fragile delivery inflected with cracks—it took years for the Knoxville-born artist to overcome her fear of singing in front of others. “My family’s very musical and singing came to me really naturally, but for some reason I became super-private about it after we moved to Cleveland when I was eight,” says maryjo, who also started writing songs as a little girl and took up piano in fourth grade. As she got older, she worked through her shyness by sharing videos on social media, steadily amassing a devoted following that now includes over 1.3 million followers on TikTok. After bringing her powerhouse vocals to the stage on season 19 of “American Idol,” maryjo landed a deal with Atlantic Records and released her debut single, “Love Fools”: a stripped-back but spellbinding ballad featuring the soul-stirring piano work of two-time Academy of Country Music Award-winner Gordon Mote.

Her most recent release “Cleveland” marks the latest in a series of singles that have earned maryjo more than 4M worldwide streams and counting, including the high-spirited “Don’t Call Me” and the compelling “Traffic.” “With every song I sing, I try to think about every single angle that people could hear it from and all the ways they could possibly connect to it,” says maryjo. “I’m already getting my therapy from the whole process of writing and recording, so I want to make sure that I’m giving people something that helps them tap into their own emotions and makes them feel better about whatever they’re going through.”