During her co-hosting gig on Backstage Country with Elaina Smith, Gabby Barrett reflects on her debut single, “I Hope.” The track, which was released independently, led her to sign with Warner Music Nashville. After Idol, Barrett remembered asking herself what she really wanted to do. While ‘I Hope’ really just fell out of thin air, it was one of my first writes in Nashville. “We had went from label to label to label to label playing songs.