* En anglais uniquement
Vocalist
Rayne Johnson is a country music artist whose vocal style adds a touch of soul to songs that combine down-home themes with pop-friendly melodies. After years of paying his dues with live performances and singing competitions,
Johnson's smooth but expressive tenor started winning a larger audience in 2019 when a pair of singles began making noise on radio and streaming, the cocky "Laid Back" and the heartfelt "Front Seat."
Rayne Johnson was born and raised in Fairfield, Ohio, and his parents were country music fans who regularly played
Johnny Cash and
Merle Haggard around the house.
Johnson's family were frequent churchgoers, and he first began singing at Sunday services, later crediting his exposure to gospel music for inspiring the soulful side of his delivery. When he became a teenager, the music ministers at his church began taking notice of his talents, and he joined the choir, eventually overcoming his stage fright to singing solos. In high school,
Johnson also sang with a handful of local groups, and in the late 2000s he auditioned for the popular music competition series American Idol. He fared well enough in his audition to earn a trip to Hollywood, but he was eliminated in his first few days on the West Coast.
Undaunted,
Johnson returned to Ohio and began building a regional following, playing honky tonks as a headliner and opening larger shows for
Mark Chesnutt,
Kelly Pickler,
Chris Cagle, and
Randy Houser, among others. As a sideline,
Johnson also sang on publishing demos for songwriters promoting their material, and his work in that field led to him being heard by an independent producer who thought he had talent. In 2018,
Johnson released his first single, "Lips Like Liquor." In early June 2019,
Johnson released his second song, "Laid Back," a bragging tune in which the narrator tells his ex how good things have been for him since they split. Taking off faster than the debut, the song gained attention at country radio and did well on streaming services, racking up over 1,700,000 plays in a month and a half. The reception to "Laid Back" was strong enough that
Johnson's third single was out by the end of the same month; "Front Seat" was a more romantic number in which he tells the woman he loves what he would do for her. ~ Mark Deming