Dating & Relationship status

On December 11, 2019, she received The ASCAP Foundation Desmond Child Anthem Award in New York City. The award was established by ASCAP Board member, composer and producer Desmond Child to recognize promising young artists. Child called EmiSunshine “one of the most talented up-and-coming artists and songwriters I’ve ever heard in AMERICAN music.”

EmiSunshine performs about 150 shows a year across the country. She has performed twice on Marty Stuart’s Late Night Jam at the Ryman Auditorium during CMA Music Fest and has had 16 performances at the Grand Ole Opry. She has also appeared on several national television shows, including Little Big Shots, Song of the Mountains, WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour and Pickler & Ben.

EmiSunshine’s music is generally described as country, but also exhibits Americana, bluegrass, blues and gospel influences. She has described her style as “old-time music turned upside-down.” She is known for writing and performing songs about mature subjects not ordinarily associated with artists her age, including murder, poverty, politics, autism and family dysfunction. In 2017, Rolling Stone named her among “10 new country artists you need to know.”

She released her fourth studio album, Ragged Dreams, in 2017, which included her two songs from The King. She also attracted attention for another song on that album, “90 Miles”, which was about autism. “I have a really good friend who has autism, and he was treated really differently because of it and it really bothered me,” she told the South Bend Tribune. “I met him and I didn’t know that he had autism. The kids would tell me not to talk to him, even adults… I want this song to be something that just kind of shows people that, hey, they’re just like us.”

She began working with four-time Grammy-winning producer Tony Brown in 2017, after she was introduced to him by her manager, Steve Pritchard. Brown produced her sixth studio album, Family Wars, which was released in 2019. The album includes a duet with singer/songwriter Jim Lauderdale and creative collaborations with other prominent musical artists in Nashville including songwriters Vicky McGehee, Kyle Jacobs, Chelle Rose, Autumn McEntire and Fish Fisher. In a review, the music magazine No Depression wrote that the album “establishes EmiSunshine as a strong creative force… She’s just plain good, with talents outliving the novelty that went along with her earliest exposure at age 9 and establishing her as someone bold and talented enough to tackle today’s issues while honoring yesterday’s folk traditions.”

In 2016, at age 12, EmiSunshine appeared in The King, a documentary film about Elvis Presley, which featured celebrities such as Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, Alec Baldwin, Ashton Kutcher and others. For the movie, she wrote two original songs, “Danny Ray” and “Johnny June and Jesus,” which she performed while riding in the backseat of Elvis Presley’s 1963 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. She later performed at the film’s international premiere at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. The soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy award.

Soon, she was writing songs and appearing on stage with established artists. In 2014, she made her debut performance at the Grand Ole Opry. She released her first single, “Oh Mary, Where Is Your Baby?” in 2014 and a year later released her next single, “I Am Able.” She released the full-length album Black Sunday ’35 when she was nine years of age.

Emilie Sunshine Hamilton (born June 8, 2004), known professionally as EmiSunshine, is an American singer-songwriter from Madisonville, Tennessee, who is a popular social media personality. Her performance of Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel No. 6” was posted on YouTube in 2014 and received over 1 million views and attention from the Today show (NBC) and Music Row. Her YouTube series, Americana Corner, featured Holly Williams for its debut episode and earned a feature story in Rolling Stone’s Rolling Stone Nation section.

EmiSunshine grew up on June 8, 2004, in Madisonville, Tennessee, to Randall Hamilton, a musician and recording engineer, and Alisha Karol Hamilton, a songwriter and nurse. Randall and Alisha have said that, even as a baby, EmiSunshine exhibited a remarkable musical ability, humming along to songs with perfect pitch. “I noticed it at nine months,” Randall told the Chicago Tribune. “There was a pure tone in the key of C coming out of her. I thought, ‘This baby is something. She may be able to sing when she is older.'” By the age of three, she was singing with her grandmothers. Her first performance in front of an audience occurred at age four, when she performed “You Are My Sunshine” at the wedding of her aunt and uncle.