They don’t make ’em like Mae Estes anymore. Fresh-faced and truth-telling, she was raised on the kind of country music most people can only name drop, not talk about for hours on end. Mae, born and raised in Hope, Arkansas (population just over 8,000), stirs up the kind of plain dirt country that understands how hard most people work to make ends meet and how much blowing off steam on Friday night actually means.
Singing around Nashville, Mae has been making noise and critically acclaimed songs that show both mettle and a genuine vision, earning her critical and industry acclaim. She was named the Association of Independent Music Publishers’ Rising Artist-Writer of the Year in 2024 and won the Arkansas Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year three years in a row.
“Every step of the way,” she says, “I knew one thing: I wanted to make honest country music. God sure gave me a unique perspective and story to write songs from, but it’s always been important to me to also celebrate and remember the timeless music that came before me.”
In a 10-year town, Mae is right on time. She’s taken that decade to internalize how much the music means to her. Her influences run deep; her style is unflinchingly candid and frank, and she sings not only about the tough actual life stuff, but also the power of letting go at the end of a long week.
To that end, today she drops “The 90s Called,” the embodiment of wry, straight-up and full-on country gold and a dancefloor juggernaut designed for scuffing boots and booty shaking. Watch the lyric video HERE.
Written by good friend and Grammy Award-winning Aaron Raitiere alongside Benjy Davis, Mae’s Blue Highway Records debut is a slice of pure beer joint perfection. Rocking a massive pocket from old school drummer Lonnie Wilson, while citing bits of hits from Brooks & Dunn, Conway Twitty, Billy Ray Cyrus and Alan Jackson, “The 90s Called” is half-comic, half-throwdown for people who know the difference between unfiltered and real and a mere notion of throwback country.
“In middle school, singing on the AM country station every Tuesday was the best,” Mae explains. “What was on the radio was so amazing – Alan Jackson, Brooks & Dunn, Reba, Lee Ann Womack, Martina McBride, Shenandoah. My taste spans wider than just the country genre, but the artists and songwriting I grew up on really inspired the music maker I am today.”
With fiddle from Grammy-winning Time Jumper, John Anderson vet and O.G. Lower Broadway legend Joe Spivey, flaring dobro from Josh Matheny and a sense of whimsy, Mae creates an animated take on what made country great in a time where name-checking older artists is meant to suggest authenticity.
While readying her much-anticipated 2027 full length Blue Highway debut, Mae is taking a moment to honor her bona fides by looking back and showing her kind of country from the source. Beyond the euphoria-delivering single, she flips Country Music Hall of Famers Brooks & Dunn’s heart-rending “She’s Not the Cheatin’ Kind” – also out today – to inhabit the song from the woman finally letting go’s perspective. Honest, raw and real, like “90s,” she knows how to make a song sparkle, but also hit overdrive to deliver the kind of power-forward performance that makes a song crescendo from the vocals – not the guitar.
