If you need a performer who can break your heart with a ballad, then spit out a sarcastic one-liner while piloting a spaceship, Aubrey Peeples is your artist. She doesn’t just cross genres; she obliterates the lines between them.
But just when you pigeonhole her as a country ingenue, Aubrey pulls the rug. She pivoted from Music City to mutant mayhem in Sharknado (yes, the glorious, ridiculous one), then leaped into the stratosphere as the fiery, purple-haired Jem in the 2015 cult film Jem and the Holograms . Critics didn’t know what to do with her chameleonic energy—but fans did.
You probably first felt her presence before you knew her name. Maybe it was as the radiant, conflicted Layla Grant on ABC’s musical drama Nashville —a role that demanded she go toe-to-toe with Connie Britton and hold her own at the Grand Ole Opry, all while making you forget she wasn’t a seasoned touring musician. Spoiler: She is. That rasp in her voice? That’s not acting. That’s a Florida native who grew up absorbing everything from Janis Joplin to Fleetwood Mac before deciding the screen needed a little more rock-and-roll soul.