Lennon Stella’s story, on the surface, feels like one we’ve heard before. A viral internet moment leads a kid onto a massively popular television show. But now she's using everything she learned from playing a rising musician to jumpstart her music career IRL.

In May 2012, then 12-year-old Lennon and her 8-year-old sister Maisy Stella uploaded a video of themselves singing Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend” in perfect harmony, accompanied only by empty plastic tubs of butter they used as percussion. Around the same time, she was cast in ABC’s Nashville, a soapy country music-themed drama on which she and Maisy played sisters Maddie and Daphne Conrad, daughters of fictional country legend Rayna Jaymes (played by Connie Britton). After four seasons on ABC and two more on CMT, the series aired its final episode in July 2018.

While the Nashville chapter of Lennon's career may have come to a close, another is beginning with her now focusing on where she started: music. She has emerged from the series (and the city of Nashville, where she still resides) as a budding pop singer-songwriter, not unlike her character on the show — grounded and willing to be vulnerable, with all the longings and fears of an 18-almost-19-year-old.

It helps that Lennon has a natural knack for translating those longings and fears into lyrics that cut you wide open. On August 7, she released her first official song and music video as a solo artist at RECORDS LLC./Columbia Records, for "Like Everybody Else — Acoustic." The song is a piano ballad about coming to terms with hard truths about yourself. The video is three minutes of Lennon at the piano, singing about the uncertainty of what's to come. It’s the kind of song you write when you go from being a kid to being an adult, or when you leave something comfortable — a job, a school, even a TV show — to go off on a new adventure, taking on a whole new realm of insecurities. "Been drilled in my head forever, ‘be better,'" she sings. "Don’t even go near a mirror, it’ll kill you. Trust me you don’t wanna see yourself."

"Like Everybody Else" is her first official release for a reason — she tells Teen Vogue that the song isn’t too far removed from the folk-infused music she was making on Nashville (so as not to alienate that audience), while still allowing herself room to reach more into pop territory. But the song also functions as a good mission statement for her new work, and a narrative about the dark places she has passed through before getting to where she's at today. The song’s refrain echoes what goes through the brain of anyone who has ever second-guessed their talents or wondered where they fit in, which is to say, everyone: “What made me think I was special?” she asks. “I’m not special, turns out I’m just like everybody else.”