Wednesday, September 2, 2026Vol. I · Nashville Edition · Free of chargeNashville, TN · Rapid City, SD
Country, pop and the honest kind of lyric.
The Tiffany Johnson Times
All the songs fit to print

Profile

From the Black Hills to Nashville · Page 6

Tiffany Johnson grew up in Rapid City, South Dakota, the daughter of a working country-rock musician. Piano came first. At seven she carried a homemade demo to the Wild West Songwriters Festival in Deadwood, convinced the Nashville publishers on the bill were, in her words, fake people who would never come to a place like Deadwood. The guitar arrived on her eighth birthday. She was playing the Central States Fair and the Dahl Arts Center's emerging-artist series that same year, and the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville at thirteen.

At fifteen a song of hers called "Paralyzed" made Tin Pan South's Best Of round, picked by a blind audition that kept the writers' names and ages from the judges. She was back in the top twelve the following year. American Songwriter named her a semi-finalist twice, for "Brooklyn" in 2022 and "Anybody Else" in 2023, and the Nashville Songwriters Association International has repeatedly listed her as One to Watch. She finished Stevens High School a semester early, signed a Nashville lease the week she turned eighteen, and moved in January 2022.

Since the move she has played Exit/In, The End, The East Room, Brooklyn Bowl and the Country Music Hall of Fame, and kept working the Midwest, from Levitt at the Falls in Sioux Falls, where she opened for Lizzie No, to Evangeline's in St. Louis and the Epiphany Center for the Arts in Chicago. Spotify has placed her on Fresh Finds, Fresh Finds Pop, Fresh Finds Indie and New Music Nashville. In 2024 Ben Goldsmith recorded "I Miss NYC," a song the two of them wrote, for his album The Start of Something Beautiful.

Temptress arrived on April 24, 2026, produced by Griffin White, a friend from Rapid City who also lives in Nashville. Music Connection scored it 8.4 out of 10 and called "Shocked!" frankly brilliant. She estimates she writes about two hundred songs a year, and she is plain about which half of the job she is in it for. That July she brought her Nashville band home to the Black Hills for a run of shows over the Fourth, none of the three having seen the Hills before, and signed records at Black Hills Vinyl on the eleventh.

“the songs that she submitted to us make us want to hear the whole damn thing”Music Connection, April 2026

In her own words

  • “I'm more of a songwriter than a singer. I sing because I like to write songs.”

  • “I write about things that I don't know how to say any other way. It's how I understand my own feelings.”

  • “I signed a lease, literally the week I turned 18.”

  • “If an album was a journal, that's how it would feel.”

Shared the stage with

  • War
  • Gary Allan
  • Chancey Williams & the Younger Brothers Band
  • Emily Scott Robinson
  • Georgia Webster
  • Cecilia Castleman
  • Lizzie No

Playlisted by Spotify

  • Spotify Fresh Finds
  • Fresh Finds Pop
  • Fresh Finds Indie
  • New Music Nashville

Press

  • “the songs that she submitted to us make us want to hear the whole damn thing”
  • “the frankly brilliant "Shocked"… an authentic, enjoyable, and promising pop star”
  • “Tiffany Johnson is a rising star”
  • “It's a song you know would kill live… and that's what makes a great single”
  • “Tiffany shatters the nice-guy facade… The track is packed with wit and high energy”
  • “Butterflies and Barbie dolls inspired some of Tiffany Johnson's earliest songwriting”
Tiffany Johnson on stage at Exit/In, Nashville, with a white electric guitar
On stage at Exit/In, Nashville.

By the numbers

8
years old when the first guitar arrived
13
years old at her first Bluebird Cafe set
2×
American Songwriter semi-finalist (Brooklyn, Anybody Else)
2×
Tin Pan South "Best Of" writers round
200
songs written in a typical year, by her own estimate
Engraving of the Black Hills of South Dakota: pine ridges, granite spires and a winding road

The Black Hills, where the songs started.Engraving

Photographs

From the picture desk · Page 6
Tiffany Johnson mid-song under blue stage light at Exit/In with her band
Exit/In, Nashville.June 2026
Tiffany Johnson laughing in front of an outdoor stage in a red dress while her band plays behind her
The Custer Beacon, Custer, South Dakota. First night of the Black Hills run.July 2026
Tiffany Johnson standing outdoors with the three musicians in her band
Her Nashville band on the Black Hills run: Caleb Pierce, Caleb Spears and Julian Melton, none of whom had seen the Hills before.July 2026
Black-and-white portrait of Tiffany Johnson in a jeweled chain headpiece and beaded bodice
The Temptress portrait.April 2026
Black-and-white photograph of Tiffany Johnson singing into a microphone on a smoky stage
Exit/In, from the floor.June 2026
A young Tiffany Johnson singing at a microphone with a red sparkly electric guitar
Before Nashville.Early edition
Engraving of a Nashville street at dusk with a microphone in the foreground

Nashville, where she signed a lease the week she turned eighteen.Engraving