Country Singer Kylie Rae Harris Dies at 30 in 3-Vehicle Crash

Country singer Kylie Rae Harris died on Wednesday in a three-vehicle crash in north New Mexico, Harris’ publicist confirmed. She was 30. A 16-year-old driver was also killed, according to the Associated Press, while the third driver escaped injury.

“We are heartbroken to confirm that Kylie Rae Harris passed away in a car accident last night,” Harris’ publicist said in a statement to Billboard. “We have no further details to share, and ask for privacy for her family at this time. Everyone that knew Kylie knew how much she loved her family and, beyond that, how much she loved music. The best tribute to her unmatched enthusiasm for both is to spread as much love as you can today, and listen to music that fully inspires you.”

Harris’ last social media post hinted that she was low on gas. “Fuel range is 46 miles and I’m 36 from the nearest gas station. Dear baby Jesus please don’t get me stranded in NM,” she tweeted Wednesday afternoon.

Later, she updated her Instagram followers that she had a full tank, sharing a Boomerang video of herself giving a thumbs up from the driver’s seat. “We good now,” she captioned the shot.

Harris was on her way to Taos, New Mexico to play in the Big Barn Dance music festival. She recalled on her Instagram Story memories of sitting in the backseat while spending time with her late father and sister in Taos. In the serious heart-to-heart video, she mourned her father’s death and cried over an incident that she took as a good sign on Wednesday.

“Driving these roads today — I’ve been driving for almost 12 hours, and you would think that’s so exhausting and boring — but the last couple of hours, driving through the mountains and just, like, remembering my place in the backseat as a little kid when my dad was making these trips-” she says, before choking up.

“I started getting real sad. And then all of a sudden these random cows show up in the middle of the road. That might sound really crazy [but] there was this time, it’s something we always talked about, with my dad and my sister. I was in the backseat asleep — I was like 10 or 12 — and we hit something really hard. I popped up and was like, ‘What’s that?’ and my dad said, ‘Cattle guard!’ but really he hit a cow. I know that’s really depressing.”

“But just the fact that…I was on my trip through the mountains and I was crying and I was sad and all of a sudden these cows appeared out of nowhere. But we grieve in different ways, and… I don’t know,” she explained, ending the video.

Harris released her latest self-titled EP in March of this year, with the project including songs penned with Jon Randall, Dave Berg, Bonnie Bishop and Wayne Kirkpatrick. The album also features the song “Twenty Years From Now,” a track written as a prayer for her 6-year-old daughter. She called it the most important song she’s ever written.

“You deserve nothing less than happiness/ And so do I/ Twenty years from now/ My prayer is that somehow/ You’ll forgive all my mistakes and be proud of the choice I made/ God I hope I’m still around/ Twenty years from now,” she sings on the track.

“It scared me thinking that it was totally possible I could be gone before my daughter reaches that point,” she told Billboard when the song debuted. “I want to meet my kid’s kids. Getting to the age your parents were when you were a child brings a whole lot of perspective.”

Photo credit: Torres Music Group