Carolyn Arends wrote her first song at the ripe old age of eight. It was a song for mother's day. But unlike most who dabble in the art of song at that age and then cast it aside when schoolwork or boys enter into life, she soon wrote another one -- about an acorn, an assignment for school. It portended her future, we can now see, and her path was set. "I started writing songs and just never stopped," she says. Indeed.

Arends got her first publishing deal at 21, fresh out of college--a pretty hefty vote of confidence for an unknown Canadian upstart. Her first trip to Nashville was to sign the deal as a staff writer for Benson Music Publishing. That deal was to set Arends on another path, unbeknownst to her.

"At that time, I didn't think I had artist aspirations." she admits. "I just wanted to write for other people. I thought I was too shy to record any of my own songs." During her three-year deal with Benson, though, Arends began to become aware that maybe there were some songs she might want to sing herself. It wasn't long before she signed as an artist with Reunion Records, and one of the most successful Christian music careers was born. Her tenure at Reunion has yielded three award winning and chart-topping albums. And it has also yielded a mature singer and songwriter and a fine, articulate human being.

Arends' writing has been described as whimsical, optimistic, wise. It is certainly all those things. But her stylistic growth as an artist from folk pop to folk rock, to alternative-esque folk-pop, perhaps, has also borne an authentic and honest songwriter.

"I think [my writing] is hopeful, but at the same time, real," she says. "It's not trying to camouflage the human condition, but it's looking for the good stuff in the midst of it all."

As a writer, Arends describes herself as somewhat of a traditionalist, at least in structure and form. "It's that Dr. Seuss complex," she good-naturedly says. "It's hard for me to let go of symmetry between lines and the traditional verse/chorus form. There are some brilliant writers deconstructing song form and they do it really well. But I still gravitate at the end of the day towards songs that if you've heard it once you can hum the chorus and say what the hook was."

That might explain, in part, her success as both a writer and an artist. Her subject matter might also play in to that success. Though a part of the Christian genre for the last 10 years, (which includes, she reminds us, ska and hip hop and pop and rock and more), Arends' material has never been preachy, but instead, positive and comforting, even. Much of her work comes certainly from a healthy spiritual perspective, but also from her being an astute observer of the human condition; one who digs deep into the beauty of life in all its complexities and dualities. It resonates with humans of every persuasion.

And perhaps Carolyn Arend's music is just what the world needs right now: a real voice of a living, breathing human full of foibles that shines a light on the good, instead of whining about or glorifying the negative.

A peermusic Nashville writer since mid-1999, Arends says interacting with the country market as a writer is a new frontier, but she's delighted by the points where, in the evolution of her writing and the evolution of country music, the two intersect. And there are more of those points than any of us might expect. Her decade as a professional songwriter has provided her an important and fundamental wisdom about songs. She deigns to force or manipulate towards an end. "I'm learning quickly that if you try to artificially change something so it will fit a market better, people can smell that out...the message I'm getting is, just write the songs. People cutting the songs are getting really great at hearing all the different ways a good song can be done."

A good song is a good song is a good song. That has always been, and will always be true, she says. "So I'm just trying to write good songs."

Actually, she writes great songs.