When one thinks of country music and the origins of its most famous singers, one may think of Dolly Parton of Tennessee, Garth Brooks of Oklahoma or Randy Travis of North Carolina

But there are few country singers on Big Ben’s side of the pond, despite Albion’s globally recognised and irrefutably valuable contributions to other music genres.

That is beginning to change, with 23-year-old Nia Nicholls of Alderholt reaching one million streams via Spotify on Monday, September 18.

Nia first started learning the guitar at 10 years old, and always knew she wanted to be a singer-songwriter.

She said: “Technically I started writing before that, but I started learning the guitar when I was 10 so that’s when I really focused on songwriting.”

All of Nia’s songs incorporate experiences she has had throughout her life.

She said: “I write songs all the time. I have a whole folder on my laptop of songs that I want to record at some point.

“To be honest, the thing that would inspire me is usually someone who said something mean to me. I like to write based on personal experiences, whether it’s about my friends, or if it’s about boys or for instance, going to Nashville.

"Anything that happens in my life I like to write about it. It’s kind of therapeutic in a way. It’s almost like writing in my diary. Anything can inspire me, but to be honest, most of the time it’s when I’m upset about something when I go into overdrive with the writing.”

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Nia achieved the seven-figure milestone in stream counts partially due to an unexpected, and as of yet unexplained, spike in streams of her song He’s Not You in Indonesia.

Nia said: “It just kept going up and up and up, and that’s how I ended up with 100k monthly listeners, and the song He’s Not You hit 300,000 streams, I believe.

“Yeah, it all just took off in Indonesia and in the end, my record label were like, ‘To be honest, we have no idea what’s going on.’”

Nia isn’t resting on her laurels after hitting 1m streams. She will soon be travelling back to her favourite recording studio in Nashville in October, after a stop in New Braunfels, Texas for the ‘In A Jam Down by the River’ festival.

She said: “When you’re recording in Nashville, the musicians they bring in for you, they’ve worked with everybody- Shania Twain, Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton, so on top of it being quite convenient to record there whilst I’m there, it’s also just a great thing to say I’ve done and say I’ve worked with them.”