East London songwriter,  Chante-Marie Berry-Gordon  believes that songwriting and music chose her as much as she chose it.

“I feel like growing up, as everyone does, you have various interests… I always loved languages, for example, sports and sprinting, but music was always a constant, and it was always something I kept going back to,” she says.

These days, the rewards of her long journey are coming thick and fast. In 2024, she was honoured at the BMI [Broadcast Music, Inc.] Pop Music Awards for her collaboration with producer KXVI and New York Rapper Lil Tjay to produce the song ‘Beat the Odds.’

“I felt blessed and very grateful to win the award. It opened my eyes to the power of creative collaboration and to the opportunities that can unfold when you put yourself out there,” Berry-Gordon said.

The young artist recalls writing stories on bits of paper, which became songs, at just five years old. After she got her first voice recorder and keyboard, she would sing them. “You can hear yourself back and then it all kind of evolved, and with the keyboard I started putting my melodies down.”  

​Her mum, Virginia Gordon, recognised her daughter’s talent and, with her father Patrick Berry, co-founder of Choice FM, introduced her to a vocal coach. Later, when Berry-Gordon attended the Italia Conte School of Performing Arts, she took a variety of different subjects, but enjoyed singing the most.  And training well-known vocal coach/producer Everis Pellius, who has worked with artists such as LL Cool J and Ashanti, only added to her excitement.

“It was a wonderful experience because it allowed me to sing in a studio for the first time. My parents would take me to Windsor, where it was. I began to hear what I sounded like on a track. He introduced me to a piano teacher, and I ended up meeting Neville Thomas [a music producer] through my piano teacher Nimai Walcott.”

Meanwhile, inspired by her dad’s station, “Choice FM”, to which she would listen throughout the day, Berry-Gordon soon found her genre.

“We would listen to Reggae, dance hall music, but it was R&B that made me fall in love with music. That is where it all started, listening to Ashanti, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and Alicia Keys. It was something about hearing them sing and hearing their melodies, that I wanted to re-enact what they were doing, so I would be like “ohhh… I love that and I am going to try it,”  explained Berry-Gordon, who is of Saint Lucian and Jamaican heritage

Thomas played a significant role in developing Berry-Gordon’s style, collaborating with her over many years. The working relationship involved co-writing sessions, with Thomas producing beats while she wrote the songs. Some found success with independent artists, including one artist, Faye B, who won “Best Female R & B Artist  of the Year 2016” award  (in Switzerland) with a song the pair had written together.

​The 2020 lockdown changed everything. It gave Berry-Gordon time to think about how to grow her career. She pursued  freelance songwriting using TikTok and Instagram to reach out to other artists and released her own recordings on distribution platforms like Spotify and Apple.

Her plan worked. Her 2024 award stemmed from a collaboration with KXVI, which began in 2021. The song that Lil Tjay created from it generated 5 million streams on Spotify, catching the attention of BMI .

“My award, which I got with KXVI and other producers on the track, was for a high-performance track streaming count,” Berry Gordon explained.

As she looks to the future, Berry-Gordon said that the only barriers she has faced are the ones she placed on herself by being afraid to step out of her comfort zone. 

“When people asked me ‘What do you do?’ It took me a while to be comfortable saying that I do music and to shift into that mindset and that person. Even though I was doing music and was pursuing it, I did not yet feel that I had the right to say it.”

So, what’s her advice to others pursuing their dreams? “Believe in your source and believe in yourself…., find out what success looks like for you and don’t let other people put limitations on you,” she said.

See Chante-Marie Berry-Gordon in action here.