20-year-old Florence Sommerville, is a singer-songwriter from Orsett, a small Essex village, who thrives on modern country music. She’s been playing guitar since she was around eight years old, and writing songs since she was 12, and has performed at open mics for the past seven years. When she was 14 she reached the final of Open Mic UK competition held at the O2 Indigo Arena in London. She’s also played at several major festivals including Latitude, Moseley Folk and Arts Festival, Manchester Food and Drink Festival and many listening venues around southern England. November 2023 saw her opening for Nashville star Hannah Bethel at the Slaughtered Lamb, London.
In October 2023 she released her self-penned debut single, the aptly-titled On My Way, to widespread radio play across the width and breadth of the UK and further afield. To a simple, but effective acoustic-based arrangement, Florence’s rich, emotional voice takes the listener on a journey of self-discovery as she explores the anxieties and doubts of a young person as they make their way through life. The title track from her digital EP released in the summer of 2023, a set of songs by deeply self-aware teenager who is still making sense of herself—who she is, what she stands for, where her life is going. She doesn’t arrive as the next ready-made country star beauty figure Barbie doll. There is an unquestionable realness about the way Florence makes sense of life through her music. But she exhibits a surety of mind beyond hers years, to create music that connects and inspires, and that will inflame a growing fire.
There’s a raw rootsy quality to Florence’s music that belies her youthfulness. An assured performer, she takes total command of any stage from the outset and allows her crystalline vocals to shine on her well-crafted original songs. A huge lover of country music, whilst in Nashville last year, she played the famed Commodore Grill and Tennessee Brew Works and also recorded demos of some of her new self-penned songs, stating that she felt as if she had found her spiritual home.
