Just Jayne Debut EP Arrives With Harmonies Forged at Belmont University

The Just Jayne debut EP, titled Jayne, is out now via The Core Records, a seven-track collection from Nashville-based singer-songwriters Taylor Edwards, Jillian Steele and Rachel Wiggins that centres the trio’s three-part harmonies and country-pop songwriting across a run of breakup lines, relationship reflections and questions about what comes next.

Two songs are brand new to the project: ‘Emergency Contact’ and ‘Bad Day’, each accompanied by a visualiser. The remaining five tracks, ‘Love A Loser’, ‘What’s His Name?’, ‘Climate Change’, ‘Death & Taxes’ and ‘White Picket Fence’, had been released previously, gathering the audience that made this full collection possible.

A Songwriting Room That Became a Band

The origin of Just Jayne is less a chance encounter than a deliberate collision. According to Songwriter Universe, the three members first came together when they were placed in the same songwriting group on campus at Belmont University in Nashville. From a pedagogical exercise in collaborative writing, something more durable formed. Edwards grew up in Georgia, Steele in New York, and Wiggins between California and Arkansas, three distinct American geographies, and yet the songs they kept writing together circled the same emotional territory: heartbreak, uncertainty, the particular anxiety of early adulthood.

That shared core gave them the figure of Jayne herself, a composite character assembled from their combined names and experiences. ‘She started as a combination of the three of us, but she’s become every girl in a way, your best friend, your big sister, or a version of yourself,’ the group said. ‘We hope people can hear these songs and find a little piece of themselves in her.’

The Just Jayne Debut EP and Its Collaborators

The writing credits across Jayne read like a careful map of contemporary commercial pop-country. Meghan Trainor, Kid Harpoon, Tyler Johnson, Sasha Alex Sloan and Allison Veltz Cruz all contributed at various points across the project. ‘Bad Day’ was co-written by Trainor, Kid Harpoon and Johnson, while ‘Emergency Contact’ came from Edwards, Steele and Wiggins writing alongside Sloan and King Henry.

Kid Harpoon’s production and writing credits include work with Harry Styles and Maggie Rogers. Johnson, meanwhile, has worked with Harry Styles, SZA and Sam Smith. The pedigree is visible in the tracks: ‘Bad Day’ carries a polish that sits comfortably alongside mainstream pop, without sacrificing the conversational directness that distinguishes the trio’s writing at its best.

The early signs were already there before the EP arrived. Songwriter Universe notes that in 2025, Just Jayne began going viral with ‘Climate Change’, ‘Death & Taxes’ and ‘All Backroads’, three of the five previously released tracks now collected on the EP. That moment of online traction gave the project a running start, with an audience already primed for the full release.

Live and on the Road

The group marked the EP’s arrival with a record-release party at Flamingo on 13 August. Their 2026 live schedule has been extensive: an international debut at C2C Festival in London earlier in the year, dates supporting Nate Smith on his Long Live Country Rock and Roll Tour, and festival appearances at CMA Fest and LASSO MONTRÉAL. Taste of Country recently included the trio in its ‘RISERS: 2026 Artists to Watch’ roundup, a measure of how quickly the project has moved from campus songwriting group to a name on the country-pop circuit.

The next step is already written into the live schedule: those festival and tour appearances continue to serve as the primary proving ground for songs built, from the beginning, around the act of being heard together in a room.