Resilient and powerful are just two words one could use to describe the Cortland-based artist Cloey Tierno. For the past few years she has been battling a rare cancer, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, spending the summer in treatment facilities. Despite these setbacks, she is powering through, holding that same fiery passion for music.
Recently, she has asked for support, launching a Kickstarter to create her sophomore album.
At just 18 years of age, Cloey Tierno has been singing and creating music for as long as she can remember, singing and coming up with lyrics inside countless notebooks. Recording professionally for the first time at the age of 15 with the talented Chris Merkley and Gabe Cummins, her first record i fell in love with the rain brings 14 pop-oriented songs to the table, all written in her bedroom on an acoustic guitar. About the album, Cloey Tierno says “Those songs quickly developed into a fuller potential, musically, than I could’ve given them on my own, and yet simultaneously preserved the organic elements that they possessed when I first wrote them.”
She was nominated for a SAMMY (Syracuse Area Music Award) the following year for Best Pop Recording of 2023, winning at the end of the night. “It gave me such validation for what
I’d created and encouragement to continue finding success in what I loved doing more than anything else,” she said. Finding inspiration in arts like Taylor Swift, Gracie Abrams, and Maisie Peters, Cloey Tierno says that these artists integrate writing, the foundations of it, production, and vocal delivery in a beautiful manner, a manner that she finds herself repeatedly connecting with.
The music I write is just a poetically honest reflection of where my head or my heart is at as I’m writing it, or sometimes it’s just me trying to more deeply understand an experience that, at the time, I couldn’t fully grasp. It’s also important to me to create a final product that exudes relatability and something raw and authentic. Ultimately, I strive to share lyrics and storytelling that I put a piece of myself into and am truly proud of, and that somebody listening to those results also happens to find a piece of themselves in it, too.
Cloey Tierno.
Dealing with chemotherapy treatments hasn’t been easy, but she has concluded the majority of the treatments. About the diagnosis, she said, “What I can tell you is that when I chose to navigate it with intention and openness, it grew to be one of the loudest voices in my songwriting and a guiding factor to both my attitude and my creativity. That integration between the world of art and the world of spirituality is something that I believe has strengthened all the music I have created since and will continue to create, for the better.”
Looking to the future, she is running a Kickstarter campaign to be able to financially support the making of her second studio album. It’s an all-or-nothing approach, meaning she must make the full amount she is pledging or else she won’t be able to produce the album. She wants to demonstrate how she has grown as both a human and as an artist since her first album release and has more important things to say.
You can support Cloey by donating to her Kickstarter, and streaming her music on Spotify or Apple Music.
