Bella Lam performed with her band at UTC’s 2025 Homecoming tailgate. Photo by Ray Soldano.
Country music artist Bella Lam is shooting for the stars.
The 23-year-old singer-songwriter from Jackson, Tennessee, has amassed more than 80,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram. She performs in venues across the Southeast, building a name for herself on stage and online.
Behind the scenes, she is a student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, pursuing a degree in music with a focus on vocal performance and a communication minor.
She went from full-time to part-time student last fall when her singles “Tears in My Tequila” and “Take It Out On My Guitar” started to gain traction.
“I started booking gigs every single weekend,” Lam said. “It started getting busier.”
Despite spending less time on campus, she still “bleeds blue and gold,” she said. She also loves living in Chattanooga and its music scene.
“I think it’s very eclectic,” Lam said. “It’s of course where I started doing live music. I’m very partial and biased, but I love it a lot. All the people are very nice and very welcoming.”
Another positive of living in Chattanooga as a musician, Lam said, is that it’s situated “right in the middle of everything.” She can easily make it to shows in Atlanta, Knoxville and Nashville without making serious travel plans.
That’s how she was able to play nearly 100 shows last year.
“I probably get one to three weekends off,” she said. “I play in Virginia. I play in Northern Georgia. I play in Alabama and Nashville. I play all over Tennessee.”
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Click here to listen to “Tears in My Tequila.” Watch the music video for “Take It Out On My Guitar” here.
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Regardless of what Lam had planned for her life, music was going to be a part of it.
“I was pretty much born into music,” she said. “My dad is a doctor, but he has a medical degree and a music degree. I have cousins in Australia, and they’re doctors who do music on the side.”
Lam said her grandfather, who immigrated to the United States from China, was a violinist who wanted his family to be “well-rounded” and appreciate music as he did.
“All of my cousins play, my parents play, my siblings play,” she added. “I’m the only one that really wanted to pursue it professionally.”
Though she is a country artist, Lam is an appreciator of every music genre, which she said is important to staying dynamic as a musician.
“No matter what genre, as far away from your genre as it is, you need to listen to everything and pull a little inspiration from everything,” she said.
Growing up, she was a big fan of alternative rock bands like All Time Low and Five Seconds of Summer. She also listened to heavy metal and classic rock with her dad, which is why she incorporates heavy guitar and a “full band sound” into her own music.
Now, her favorites include Megan Maroney, Ella Langley, Lainey Wilson and Miranda Lambert. She is proud that their styles shine through in her music.
Finding her own sound, she said, did not come easy. It took embracing her southern roots to find her country twang. The first few songs she recorded in high school had more of a pop-ballad vibe.
“I knew that I was Tennessee-born and raised,” she explained, “but I was still trying to reject the country music thing. I feel like as soon as I embraced that this is who I am, I realized I actually do really love this.
“I started to find who I was as a musician and who I am now, but it took those releases to start being like, ‘Yeah, I’m a country artist.’”
Performing her music on a stage is what Lam described as one of the best parts of being a music artist. It’s an opportunity to spend time with her bandmates.
“Sometimes we play for an hour and a half, sometimes we play for four and a half hours,” she said. “It’s so tiring, but it’s really fulfilling. I know this after a good show when I’m getting into bed, about to go to sleep and I’m like, ‘Yeah, this is what I love to do and I feel so fulfilled by doing this.’”
In 2024, she played a show at the Bluebird Cafe—a small but famous club in Nashville that has hosted songwriters such as Taylor Swift, Garth Brooks, Vince Gill and Faith Hill.
“I skipped class that day,” Lam said. “My professor was totally fine with it. I brought her back a T-shirt.”
Last year, she performed at UTC’s Homecoming tailgate.
“I’m so proud of this campus. I’m always like ‘Go Mocs’ everywhere I go and I was so incredibly blessed to get that opportunity, and it was such a fun show,” she said. “Scrappy was out there dancing and my professors came out to watch. Classmates, friends and people I’d never met before who were just there to support their friends or family in the game.
“I think that UTC is such a great community and I felt so blessed to perform for that community.”
She described UTC’s role in her confidence as a musician. The music program is what taught her to “perform well.”
In her freshman year, she performed in end-of-semester finals in front of her peers.
“I had barely started performing,” she said. “That was scary, and I think that really helped me get through the hurdle of stage fright.”
The UTC music program wasn’t Lam’s first exposure to classical music training.
She learned piano and cello at a young age. She took classical lessons and performed in musical theater and school choir. Her first recital in middle school was “Think of Me” from “The Phantom of the Opera.”
Now, as a commercial country artist, she faces an interesting hurdle in the program.
“They teach you how to keep your vowels really round. If you’re in country music, they don’t want to hear your vowels. They want to hear your accent,” she said with a laugh.
Lam said her professors are supportive of her and understand the chaotic nature of pursuing a career in music. She is especially appreciative of Dr. Kenyon Wilson, a professor of applied tuba at UTC, who oversaw her practicum that allowed her to record her music in Nashville.
Wilson described Lam as “one of our best success stories of the BA in music degree.”
“The BA allows her to hone her musical side, but then also get into the business side of that,” Wilson said. “It’s one thing I’ve really enjoyed aboutwatching Bella’s journey.
“It’s been great going to local dive bars and supporting my students. Bella is out there singing and just having a blast.”
He said he recognizes the difficulty of students chasing commercial success like Lam is. Compared to future band directors or teachers with a more established career field, Lam will have to create her own career.
“Bella has had to blaze some trails with that,” he said. “In that regard, she’s an outlier, but she’s very successful so far.”
Lam is extremely aware of the social media demands that come with trying to make it in a highly competitive industry.
By posting almost daily on TikTok and Instagram—and hosting regular livestreams—she’s edging into influencer territory, something that’s often necessary to promote music today.
“Social media is really hard,” Lam said. “I used to look at my numbers and be like, ‘Oh, this video didn’t perform well as this one.’
“I feel like if you hyper fixate on that instead of finding stuff that you love to post that will get your music further, you’re going to continue to spiral and hate it … As a musician, if you’re not finding ways to love it, you’re just going to not want to do it. And I think it’s really important that you love it.”
Lam said staying grounded in that mindset is what keeps her moving forward through the long weekends, the constant posting and the uncertainty that comes with building a career on her own terms.
“The dream for me has always been making music that would reach as many people as possible,” she said, “and being a star so that I can change people’s lives with the music that I make and that I love.”
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