After writing and releasing three original songs, Tess Becket ‘23 took her music on tour and spent her summer performing live in five different states.
Since she was a little girl, Tess Becket ‘23, a Mass Communication graduate, has loved music and poetry. Whether she was listening to songs on the radio or attending poetry readings, Becket found herself drawn to melodies and lyrical words that resonated with her.
By the time she was seventeen, Becket discovered that she could combine her two interests into something that could become a lifelong passion for her: songwriting.
“...I realized, all of the music that I loved was reminiscent of the poetry that I wrote,” Becket said. “So, I started learning how to turn that into music.”
By 2025, Becket had amassed a large following for her music. According to her website, she has accumulated 37,000 likes on TikTok, 1,000,000 Instagram reel views, and 75,000 Spotify streams. With her rising popularity, Becket found the opportunity to take her music on tour in five different states in June 2025.
“I just kept releasing songs, working on songs, and then decided to put together this tour and play my first live shows that was just my original music,” she said. “So we played 11 shows, and it’s been really great, and the journey’s been awesome.”
Developing a Mass Communication Degree
While she began working on her music, Becket attended HACC Community College after high school. After two years, she transferred to York College of Pennsylvania and got involved with the College’s Mass Communication program.
“...[I] found that the program had a lot of resources in areas that I was interested in,” Becket said. “They had a lot of video equipment, audio equipment, and a recording studio…that I was able to utilize and learn how to use.”
Becket graduated in 2023 and spent six months working at an animal hospital while searching for a job in her field. Eventually, she was hired on a three-month tour as a V1 (Head of Video) for Right Angle Entertainment, a North American touring company, where she did work such as building video walls and running cameras for a touring game show. She has since continued working for them as a touring video technical director for other touring game shows.
But on the side, Becket continued working on her own music, a desire that grew after an internship she had participated in at a recording studio. After a lot of time and hard work, Becket released her first song in 2023, which now has almost 70,000 streams on Spotify.
Discovering Her Sound
Becket describes her music as “very singer-songwriter inspired,” with a pop structure and an indie rock production. Topics such as sobriety and queer love, as well as navigating the end of unhealthy relationships, have been touched upon in her lyrics, and Becket has shared that she has even pulled from her own life experiences as inspiration for her music.
“I think the first song that I’ve put out, ‘Toxic,’ is probably the best song that I’ve written,” Becket said, “and it was really fun playing it live because I discovered a couple different ways to play it. I changed the key, and it kind of changed the whole song and made me love the song all over again.”
Since December 2024, Becket and her team have been hard at work planning and booking spaces for her debut tour, First Things First: The East Coast Tour. Having the funding for her productions and a reliable team were also important factors she had to consider. Thankfully, she received the support she needed to make her tour happen.
“I was lucky enough to get some grant funding from the Young Arts Foundation and the Cultural Alliance of York to help with some gear for the tour, which was really wonderful,” she said. “And I found some great partners to go on tour with.”
In fact, she connected with many of the people she now works with at York College’s Mass Communication program. Their responsibilities range from helping her record live shows and music to producing songs, playing with her on stage and assisting with the sound technology.
In the end, Becket and her team had a remarkable experience performing live. They played in Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, and North Carolina and were even joined by singer-songwriter Jessie Lynn, who opened each show. Becket shared that she felt that the show had been incredible and was proud of all of the work that had been put into it.
“And it was really a great experience learning how to play live, learning how to connect with the audiences that we had, and sharing my music live for the first time,” Becket said.
Taking the Initiative
Now that her first successful tour is over, Becket plans to continue developing her music and hopefully do another tour when the time is right.
“I have more songs coming out,” she said. “I’m trying to release an EP by the end of this year, and then I’m kind of hooked on touring my music.”
“I have a little tour documentary from all the footage that we took on tour and then some live performances that I’ll release,” Becket added. “I’ve got a lot planned.”
Becket is very excited about what the future will hold for her and her budding music career. When asked what advice she would give to aspiring musicians, she emphasized the importance of taking initiative and working with passion, regardless of the outcome.
“Take initiative to learn everything that you can on your own,” Becket said. “You’re going to come across people that have no interest in teaching you anything, and you have to rely on yourself to learn the things that you want to learn. Everything that you do, you have complete control over for both the good and the bad.”
“Be passionate; do it even if you’re not going to be successful.”
To listen to and learn more about Becket’s music, visit her website at www.tessbecket.com.
Photo Credit: Nick Poulos
