PRESS BIO · SHORT

Carlos Rising is an independent singer-songwriter based in Wilmington, North Carolina, writing and recording without a label, a fixed genre, or anyone else's blueprint. After a run on Season 23 of The Voice, where he turned chairs for both Blake Shelton and Kelly Clarkson, he spent time in the studio writing and recording his debut album, Amsterdam, on his own terms. Come along on the journey.

Carlos Rising picked up a guitar at eleven years old and wrote his first song at fourteen, growing up as a pastor's kid with church music and his parents' record collection running through the house in equal measure. He studied Music Business at Lee University, graduating in 2017 with the kind of plan that assumes the world will cooperate. It didn't, not right away. In 2020 he lost his job in Seattle at the start of the pandemic, moved in with his parents in Tennessee for about nine months, and used that stretch to decide, for real this time, that music was the thing he was going to commit to rather than the thing he did on the side.

That decision landed him in Wilmington, North Carolina in 2021, where he formed the band Holy Heat with his cousin Christian, who would go on to produce his debut album. From there came a run of releases built the independent way, without a label behind any of it, including the EP It's Just a Phase in early 2024 and the singles "Drifting" and "If I Only Had a Day." In between all of that, his blind audition aired on Season 23 of The Voice, where he sang Eric Clapton's "Change the World," turned chairs for both Blake Shelton and Kelly Clarkson, and chose to join Team Blake for what turned out to be Shelton's final season on the show. Later that year Carlos was featured on the cover of Rock & Roamer magazine for the month of June, and held a guest appearance on NPR’s radio show on multiple occassions.

In January 2025, Carlos set out to raise $15,000 in 30 days to fund a full-length debut record on his own terms, and his community came through for him. The result is Amsterdam, ten songs recorded at School House Studio in Wilmington and Libby Lane Studios near Nashville, produced by Christian and Demetri Forakis, with a cover shot in Amsterdam by his brother-in-law Joel. He's been public about keeping the whole thing free of AI in its production, start to finish.

Upon the album’s release in March 2026, the opening track Hard to Please was selected as the winner of Tidal Music’s Artist Spotlight Program, a contest that featured independent artists around the world competing for a spot on Tidal’s editorial playlists. Carlos held the top spot on the Alt Radio editorial playlist, a collection of alternative rock/pop songs from emerging to more established acts.

None of this happens in a vacuum, and Carlos doesn't pretend it does. He clocks in at a white-collar day job most days and writes lyrics into a voice memo app on the commute or the lunch break, keeping the artistry deliberate rather than automatic. The tension between wanting to be behind a mic and needing to be behind a desk is not a problem he's trying to solve so much as a place he's trying to be honest about. If that sounds like your kind of story, he'd love for you to come along on the journey.

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