MacKenzie Porter on the heartbreaking experience of trying to make it in Nashville

MacKenzie Porter's new album, Nobody's Born With A Broken Heart, may be about sorrow and disappointment, but she's actually pretty happy right now. Not only is the Canadian singer-songwriter following her dreams of making music, but she and her husband also recently welcomed a baby girl.

"I think people get confused when the whole record is about heartbreak," Porter tells Q's Tom Power in an interview. "They're like, 'Oh, you're married. You're in a happy relationship.' And yes, of course I am, but to me, along the road as I was writing these songs, there's been lots of different heartbreak."

The heartbreak Porter experienced had to do with her career. "There's lots of times in my career that I've thought things were going to go a certain way," she says. "And it didn't go the way I thought it would. That can be heartbreaking when you love something so much."

Porter grew up on a farm near Medicine Hat, Alta., in a family that ranched by day and played music by night (her brother, Kalan Porter, won Canadian Idol in 2004). As a teenager, she moved to Vancouver to pursue acting. Later, she relocated to Nashville to give music a shot.

"If you want to be the biggest country star that you can, you have to be in Nashville," Porter says. "You can have a beautiful career up in Canada … but I always knew it was Nashville for me."

On her song Nightingale, Porter sings to the younger version of herself who moved to Nashville brimming with confidence. Immediately after she first met her producer, Joey Moi, she emailed him and asked for a record deal.

"That's how the whole relationship started — I literally just asked for it," she says. "[Now] I think I've gotten beaten down by [the industry] a little bit. The song is for me to remind myself to be the girl who showed up in Nashville, not the one who's been there for 10 years."

In Nashville, Porter encountered unexpected setbacks like having her singles pulled from the radio because they didn't move up the charts. She says even the "little nos" — like hearing that another songwriter didn't want to work with her — could be crushing.

"I didn't know any of that when I first moved to town," Porter says. "I would enter a room with a different sort of confidence than I do now, honestly."

But Porter believes we're better off taking risks even if that means getting hurt in the process. "Proof of life is dying with scars," she sings on her album's title track, "'Cause nobody's born with a broken heart."

With a new record out and a new baby, she can now see that she's exactly where she needs to be.

"I'll never forget this time in my life," Porter says. "It's the busiest I've ever been, the most sleep deprived I've ever been, but I have the most love I've ever felt. I also get to do the thing I've been trying to do for so long, [which] is put out this record."

The full interview with MacKenzie Porter is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with MacKenzie Porter produced by Vanessa Greco.