Ashe

Ashe Artistfacts

  • April 24, 1993
  • Born Ashlyn Rae Willson in San Jose, California, she added a silent "e" to her shortened surname when creating her stage name, a nod to one of her biggest musical heroes, Carole King. Ashe has also cited Stevie Nicks and Ella Fitzgerald as major vocal influences, telling Flaunt magazine, "They're such incredible, powerful women."
  • Ashe attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating in 2015 with a degree in Contemporary Writing and Production (CWP), a major she still jokes about. During a 2024 Career Jam keynote panel with fellow Berklee alum Finneas, she got the crowd cheering with an inside joke for her fellow alumni: "CWP, anybody? Yeah! You can't say that anywhere but here."
  • In the years following Berklee, Ashe broke into the industry as a featured vocalist in the dance and house scenes rather than as a solo artist. She lent her voice to Louis the Child's "Right to It" and Shaun Frank's "Let You Get Away," the latter earning a nomination for Best Dance Recording at the 2017 Juno Awards.
  • During that same period, Ashe signed a publishing deal and worked as a songwriter for hire, landing a co-write on Demi Lovato's 2017 single "You Don't Do It For Me Anymore" from the album Tell Me You Love Me. She shared the writing credit with Lovato, Jonas Jeberg, Chloe Angelides, and James "Gladius" Wong.
  • Ashe signed to independent label Mom + Pop and released her debut EP, The Rabbit Hole, in June 2018. That was the project that introduced her organic, synth-laced pop songwriting to a wider audience.
  • Ashe wrote her breakout single, "Moral Of The Story," in the immediate aftermath of filing for divorce from her first husband.
  • In September 2020, Ashe's older brother, Ryne, died suddenly after a 14-year struggle with addiction, just as she thought she had finished recording her debut album, Ashlyn. She scrapped her original plan and wrote "Ryne's Song" as a way to process her grief and say things to him she never got the chance to express.
  • Ashe met her husband, John Clark Canada (drummer for The Brook & The Bluff), when his band opened for her on tour in 2022. She later admitted she "strangely knew" she had just met her future husband, even though she was dating someone else at the time.
  • Ashe and John Clark Canada married on October 18, 2025, at a private estate in Franklin, Tennessee, in an Old Hollywood-glamour ceremony. The joy and sense of autonomy she felt that day, in sharp contrast to her first wedding at age 23, directly inspired her 2026 single "Stop The Wedding!!"

    "Stop The Wedding!" also marked a new chapter professionally: it was Ashe's first release under Atlantic Records, ending her run as an independent artist after three self-released albums (Ashlyn, Rae, and Willson) that critics dubbed her "Nashville trilogy."

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