Reston Songwriter Pursues 'Pattern' Of Success With New Single

RESTON, VA — Amanda Cunningham of Reston has a big dream. She wants to be a successful singer and songwriter.

"I went to school for history and got a history degree," said Cunningham, who moved to Reston five years ago. "When I got out of college, I wasn't super into it. The day-job thing was a little different than I thought it would be and got interested in singing again."

Cunningham first started singing when she was in high school but didn't do anything about it back then. About four years ago, she returned to music and began taking it more seriously.

"For the last two years, I've really been working on songwriting and working on songs," she said. "For the past five years, I've been working as a digital marketer in Reston. Friday, ironically, was my last day of my job. I quit my job to pursue music full-time as well."

Apart from overseeing her daughter's virtual learning at home, Cunningham is now free to pursue her dream to be a singer and songwriter.

Cunningham describes her music as guitar-driven pop, with influences of R&B and country.

"I grew up listening to country, so I sing country-ish," she said. "The way I pronounce things, probably, which I didn't realize but other people have pointed out. The way I pronounce things, I grew up in northern Maryland, out in the country area and I listened to mainly country music."

The lyrics to Cunningham's songs tend to be self-reflective, examining things she's done wrong in her life and how she could do better.

"I'm working on figuring out the sound that I like and what works best for me," she said. "Right now, I'm into the acoustic, natural-sounding stuff."

Cunningham's latest song, "Pattern," came about after she had signed up for a songwriting program in 2019 called Signature Songwriting Circle with vocal couch Cari Cole. In that program, Cunningham was paired up with Miranda Glory, who was a contestant in the second season of NBC's "Songland."

Searching for inspiration, Cunningham and Glory sat down and started talking about the things that were going on in their lives and what might make a good song.

"I had this pattern in my life where I kept getting closer to people," Cunningham said. "It was mostly female friendships. I get close to somebody and they just 'ghost' me. All of a sudden, they're not texting me back and I'm confused. This has been the last 10 years of my life that this is happening. I can probably count on two hands how many times that this has happened."

With her new song, Cunningham examines why this pattern of ghosting keeps reoccurring and what her role in it is.

"I kept picking people who would do this type of thing, cutting people off," she said. "That's something I would never do. We all say we wouldn't do it, but I haven't done it. I guess I'm more of the confrontational type, where I'm like, 'I'd rather you know the truth instead of wonder about that truth.' That's also the part that bothers me about it."

Glory shared some personal stories that related to what Cunningham was talking about and they began writing the song together via Zoom and Google Docs. Cunningham then enlisted a producer's help in producing "Pattern." She released the song on Feb. 5, and it's now available to listen to online.

As Cunningham carves a path toward musical success, her plan for now is to continue writing and recording songs.

"I want to take a path of doing artist stuff and then also writer's stuff, because I really enjoy the writing and the collaborating process with other people's songs," she said. "I'm going to try to figure out how to make money doing that. What I'm striving to is getting into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame and getting 11 Grammys. Which seems like really big, obviously. But if I want to do that, how do I get there?"

To achieve these lofty goals, Cunningham acknowledges that it's going to take hard work and she'll have to write a lot of quality songs to build her resume and make connections.

"Now that I've quit my job, I now have the time to put into that, whereas I didn't before," she said. "It was just kind of at night when my daughter was asleep. But now I can do it full time."