Odie Leigh is a Louisiana-born film school graduate who never set out to become a musician. Rather, she stumbled into the music industry via a bet she made with her rapper roommates during the pandemic.
“In COVID, I moved in with these two rapper roommates, these two dudes I was friends with. It was COVID so everyone was just like really on the internet with nothing much to do,” Leigh said. “And so our little group of friends did this bet to see who could go viral on TikTok, and they told me about it, and I was like, ‘You didn't include me in this!’ ... I had started playing guitar around that time, and so I just posted a couple random songs I had written, and before I knew it, I was a musician.”
“Crop Circles,” the song she penned for that challenge, became a smash hit on TikTok, garnering millions of streams and giving Leigh a huge digital platform to springboard her career in the music industry. Leigh began posting guitar covers on social platforms, and released her first EP How Did It Seem To You in 2022. Her sophomore EP, The Only Thing Worse Than A Woman Who Lies Is A Girl Who’ll Tell Truths, came out in 2023, and on July 12, 2024, Leigh dropped her debut album Carrier Pigeon. She has been on tour promoting the new record ever since.
“Carrier Pigeon is really just a play-by-play of me falling in love. All of my music is just exactly what's happening in my life as it's happening,” Leigh said. “And so it was really fun and exciting for me to get to do a project that was joyful, because my last two EPs were definitely more on the somber, introspective side. Carrier Pigeon does have some of that as well, but it was just really fun to get to go into my own life from a good perspective.”
Leigh is now based in Detroit, but still cites the vivacious personality of her native Louisiana as a major influence in her music.
“I think that being from Louisiana, everyone's kind of extroverted. There's a lot of talking and gossiping that happens in the Deep South, and we have a lot of celebrations all the time... Everything is, like, very in your face and like, really fun. And I think that growing up around that subconsciously made me able to say what I needed to say in my music. I think it raised me to be very confident and confrontational, for better or for worse, and I think that that definitely affects my music in some way,” Leigh said.
While most singer-songwriters trying to make it in the music industry today start by honing their craft and then try to promote themselves on social media, the trajectory of Leigh’s career has been the opposite: she first became viral and then started seriously pursuing music. Even Leigh recognizes that this was a pretty unconventional start for a musician. She explained that the current social media landscape allows anyone to break into the industry regardless of their background or connections.
“I think that [social media] has created this really cool world in which music is now democratized, where you don't have to live in a big city, you don't have to live somewhere that has a scene... You can just literally write songs that you enjoy and post from your bedroom, and if people enjoy it, then they will find you,” Leigh said. “And that's exactly what happened with me. I never thought of this being a life for myself, and so it's really, really cool that me and so many other people from that time, and still, even now, it just leveled the playing field for everyone. No longer do you have to have an uncle in the music industry or whatever. You can just write the music you want to write, and if it's good, people will find it.”
Leigh’s blossoming career has been taking her all across the country, from Meow Wolf in Santa Fe to the Hinterland Music Festival stage this past summer. Leigh notes that the Carrier Pigeon tour has been especially exciting, because she's gotten to play to audiences that really know her music and that she can connect with.
A newcomer to calling the Midwest her home, Leigh looks forward to spending her first winter in Detroit making soup and working on her other passion: fiber arts. New music will be coming out again soon as well, although she doesn’t quite know yet what those tunes will entail.
“I'm always writing, but I will be making another album,” Leigh said. “What that album will be? I have no idea!”
