It’s an industry famously tough to crack. With hundreds of thousands dreaming of being professional musicians, only a very few are blessed to make a living in music.
Francesca Battistelli has watched her dream come true. Now, the celebrated recording artist takes us back to the moment she started believing it could really happen.
“It’s interesting. I started writing songs in high school, and really it was then that I thought, ‘OK. I want to do this. I think I can do this!'”
“In college, I made an independent record where I wrote all the songs and played guitar. And I remember thinking, ‘This is what I’m going to try to do.’ But there’s no guarantee. It’s such a lightning striking kind of situation.”
“I worked hard for so many years not knowing where it would take me. When God did finally open the doors, it was only Him that could have done it. I tell people all the time when they ask the question, ‘How did you make it?’ ‘I don’t know! I didn’t do it! Jesus did!‘”
In the course of Francesca’s journey from penning songs in high school to taking to stages across the nation, was there ever a moment she felt it just wasn’t going to happen? When she nearly quit?
“There was. There was a season when I just didn’t know if I really wanted to do this. I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll just work at a church or write for a magazine or something.’ Because I was an English major.”
“And I went and did an internship at a ministry school for about four or five months. In that season, I really had to lay down music pretty much completely.”
“It was then in that, sort of, obscurity that I feel like God really changed my heart. He made me realize that, no, this is what I’m meant to do. This is what I love to do, and it was not long after that that everything started falling into place. But I kind of needed that shift where I realized, whether or not I ever succeed at this, this is what I was made to do.“
Francesca Battistelli is the celebrated recording artist behind the just available new album Own It – featuring the hit single “The Breakup Song”.
On the Road with Francesca Battistelli
