When you hear Amelia Presley sing, it is impossible not to hear pangs of profound sorrow wrapped in a soulful voice fraught with struggle and deeply buried secrets.  It’s a burned up and scarred over foundation from which her songs have been harvested, and she a phoenix born of the very flames that have tried to consume her completely.  Through her newly acquired liberation from her own emotional self-imprisonment, she aims only to set the record straight with the release of her new single “Harm Nobody Else,” and in so doing, act as key- bearer to others who find themselves in that same kind of bondage. Amelia Presley doesn’t want pity.  She only wants you to listen.     

“Harm Nobody Else” took only minutes to write, but was over 25 years in the making.  Physical abuse is often that way, something that is kept in the shadows out of shame until one tear drop too many falls and forces the flood gates to open. From the age of 3 years old to the age of 15, Amelia silently bore the crushing blows of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her step mother.  Keeping silent seemed her only recourse; early on because the 3-year-old toddler did not have the emotional capacity to understand what was happening nor the words to cry for help, years afterwards because by then it was just a fact of life…normal.  Through her young adulthood Amelia moved on and away from the Mississippi mud she grew up in and went on to achieve several cherished titles: singer, songwriter, 5-year military veteran and mother.  All of these hard won and precious accomplishments could not clear a place for her broken soul to rest because unhealed wounds only fester. So, she decided it was time to lance the wound and let the poison out.  The release of “Harm Nobody Else” comes on the heels of a podcast called “The Insignificant Diary of a Burden Named Phoenix” in which Amelia tells for the first time the story of the 13 years of abuse she endured.  With this declaration she hopes to help other survivors validate their own feelings by facing them head on rather than living under the burden of their abuser’s secret. 

For Amelia Presley, as with many people, music is often times a safety net 100 feet below the tightrope.  She always wrote songs, even as a child when she had to keep them hidden in her mind,tucked away like her many other secrets.  In a clamorous need to fund her music career with very limited life options to do that, Amelia enlisted into the US Coast Guard at the age of 21 where she spent 5 years as a machinery technician.  The selling of her horse and trailer and an overnight trip down to Nashville resulted in her first studio session, and soon after, live performances on stage. In the following years she recorded and released a handful of singles including “Get Lucky” that was featured on iTunes New Artist Spotlight and iTunes Hot Tracks under the country music genre, one EP and a full length album called “No Pony Ride.” In 2015 she embarked on her first legitimate tour alongside Ronnie McDowell, Logan Brill, Amber Hayes, Farewell Angelina and Megan Moreaux. Her absolute love for performing has led to several coveted appearances including the CMA Music Festival and The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, TN.  It also led to the teaming up with KK Bodiford in 2017 to form the Highway Sisters, a duo of Texas sirens that is still alive and well today.

“Harm Nobody Else” released on July 30th through Smith Music Group.  It is a standalone single release because it has to be.  It’s a compelling message with a duty so enormous that it requires a wide birth in which to travel. The music video for “Harm Nobody Else” will be released later in August.  Keeping in sync with the rawness and the isolation of such a memoir, Amelia confronted her fears by going back to the childhood home where it all happened, and filmed the video completely alone, save for her young daughter who portrays her.  “I don’t want to feel ashamed anymore.  I want to talk about it so other people feel they can talk about it too.  And now that I am, the world is a different color and I feel like I am in my own body for the first time.”