In A Room was recorded by Jordyn Shellhart in her manager’s office where the up-and-coming singer/songwriter sang lead and overdubbed backing vocals as well as playing the piano and guitar on this fifteen-track album. The angle, besides the unconventional recording location? Jordyn is a 15-year-old girl. I listened to this album without any knowledge of Shellhart, and would not have guessed she was a teenager until, through the course of my research, I came across her website with photos of her youthful smiling face.

When you hear “teenage country singer” thoughts will inevitably spring to Taylor Swift, but Shellhart is so much more than a Swift imitator. Her voice is sharper in all the right places recalling, besides the youthful confessional tones of Swift, twangs of her much more adult contemporary Martina McBride. Her songwriting is mature for her years with more than a little echoing of the sweet yet knowledgeable style of Colbie Caillat.  It alternates between tracks that invoke the image of a teenage girl-next-door (“Boomerang”) and other tracks such as “I’ve Been There Too” that force this fact out of your mind completely.

The opening track, “You Don’t Get To Get To Me,” shows Shellhart channeling Swift with a very commercial sound that will sweep her into the path that the latter has paved and will win her young female hearts. Similarly, “I’m Breaking Up” has a catchy country vibe that might actually stand a chance of being a country chart hit– a true, line-dancing, country tour-de-force. “Boomerang” and “Happy Right Now” show that despite the professionalism displayed in this album, Shellhart is still a bubbly and optimistic young girl with an upbeat vibe that the tween crowd will find hard to resist. “Infinite X’s and O’s,” “I Don’t Have to Wish At All,” and “Snowflake Falling” demonstrate that Shellhart has the same romantic inspiration as others of her generation.

But it is in “Time, Fly” and “I’ve Been There Too” that Shellhart breaks away from her cookie-cutter mold and gives glimpses of genuine maturity that will no doubt develop and improve with time and experience. Co-written with Carolyn Dawn Johnson, “I’ve Been There Too” is the achingly personal tale of losing brothers (Shellhart lost her 21-year-old brother to Type I Diabetes in 2007). No more outspoken than it needs to be, sympathetic and thoughtful, this is one of the more simple tracks on the In A Room, but also one of the most hauntingly beautiful.

I feel sure that Jordyn Shellhart would ask that you take her age out of contention when you consider buying In A Room, but once you learn this fact it constantly nudges you into incredulity. Despite the rather tween nature of half of this album, Nashville has with Shellhart a shining ball of promise that they should be very careful with going forward. If she continues to work as hard as she has been by all accounts, with such undeniable talent displayed at such an early stage, there is absolutely no reason why in a few years Jordyn Shellhart should not reach heights that even Taylor Swift has yet to scale.

[starreview]