Meet Christine Radlmann

We recently connected with Christine Radlmann and have shared our conversation below.

Christine, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.

Confidence was never something I consciously thought about until college, when a professor gave the following assignment: Write a memoir of a typical day in your life speaking only from the voice inside your head.

The following week, everyone in that class was instructed to read their memoir out loud. My peers were as surprised at my “voice” as I was by theirs. The voice inside my head was kind. Confident. Optimistic. My voice told me I looked great that morning … told me I’d crush my statistics quiz. Only when I listened to my classmates’ memoirs did I realize that most people have an extremely critical voice inside their head–often downright mean and abusive, calling themselves fat, dumb, lazy, ugly, useless, etc.

My voice is my best friend, my biggest cheerleader. Always has been. I didn’t grow up in an easy household, so I think it was a defense mechanism that I developed this kind and confident inner self. When I was sad or scared, I was always the first one to hug me, in my own mind.

It has been such a gift to have that voice as I’ve navigated the world of being a professional singer-songwriter. If someone criticizes my singing, the voice inside my head will tell me “Who cares if you’re not his cup of tea–you’re a great singer.” If I don’t land that gig I really wanted, the voice will say “This means something better is around the corner.”

I think anyone can change their inner voice to be a positive one, by consistently reframing and rewording things, until you speak to yourself like the greatest friend you could ever find.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’m one third of the country music trio known as Southpaw. We’ve released two albums, the second of which dropped in April 2024. What I’m most proud of is that we write and produce all our music. Not that we’re opposed to collaborating with other artists, because that’s something we’d enjoy doing in the future. But I’ve got enough songwriting inspiration to last me a lifetime. My phone has hundreds of song “nuggets,” whether they’re lyric ideas I’ve jotted down, melodies I’ve sung in the car, song titles I came up with that might inspire a full song.
I have a master’s degree in creative writing and I love writing songs as much as I love performing them, maybe more.

One of my goals for Southpaw is to land more sync deals, as it’s called when one of your songs is featured in a TV show, movie, or commercial. This year we had our first big success on that front–one of our songs is an episode of the Amazon Prime series Rust. Mind you, the song is in the background of that scene; the big goal would be for one our songs to be front and center in a scene. I write songs for them to be heard, so to get more of Southpaw’s music in front of a wide audience would be a dream come true.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

As we talked about before, confidence is important and rarer than you think. You have to be the first person to believe in yourself. I joke that I have “delusional confidence” because I think I can achieve almost anything with enough hard work. Growing up, one of the phrases I said all the time was “With a little advanced training …” For example, “With a little advanced training , I could become an Olympic archer.” No, I don’t want to become an archer, but I’m confident (and deluded?) enough to think I could if I wanted to! I would tell any artist to nurture their confidence so that they can brave any criticism and keep barreling forward.

Having a background in creative writing has been so helpful in my songwriting. Looking back, I remember I was criticized for my writing style by a couple of professors/peers in grad school. I now realize that I was writing songs back then–they just hadn’t been tweaked to rhyme and didn’t have music behind them. Songwriting IS poetry, make no mistake about it. If you want to write great songs, you have to be a good writer, so whether you work on your writing in a class, in a writers’ group, doing songwriter rounds–don’t just rely on a melody and killer hook, treat your lyrics with TLC.

I think a strong work ethic is paramount to achieving ANY success in this industry. No one gets anywhere by accident. You gotta know going into it that you will basically be a workaholic until you find your groove as a singer-songwriter. Lainey Wilson is such a great example of how hard work has paid off. She’s said that even after signing a major record deal, she was still doing all her own social media, doing nonstop interviews, and bangin’ down doors. Even after winning major country music awards she still performed over 100 shows in a year. You have to be willing to put in as much effort as it takes to reap success, and you can’t think of it as an equal ratio of work-to-success, because the work will always outweigh the success, at least in the beginning. Be proud of how hard you’re working and how lucky you are to be working at this, when so many people never try or are never able to work at something they truly love.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

The number one challenge for me is social media. I’m continually trying to reframe my feelings about it, because creating content and managing social media not something I enjoy. It’s a necessary evil (see, I gotta reframe that!) to utilize social media to promote your music. And it can be a very powerful and effective tool. I know we’ve gotten many listeners of Southpaw’s music from social media. But it comes with its challenges. You have to spend countless hours creating content on multiple platforms, engage with your audience, seek out new followers, run ads to promote your content, keep up with the latest trends, analyze the data of your content performance … all while navigating the cruelty that pervades social media. It can suck the life out of you. One thing I’ve learned is to avoid reading comments on social media (not just on my own posts, but on everyone’s posts) when I have a feeling that the comments will be riddled with insults. I can’t afford to be weighed down by that negativity, so I avoid it now and keep plodding forward!

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Jess Ripper, Andrew Feldman, Colin McConnell

Suggest a Story: BoldJourney is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems,
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
Highlighter Series
What would your closest friends say really matters to you?

If you asked your best friends what really drives you—what they think matters most in

Highlighter Series
When do you feel most at peace?

In a culture that often celebrates hustle and noise, peace can feel rare. Yet, peace

Highlighter Series
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?

Almost everything is multisided – including the occurrences that give us pain. So, we asked