Even with the allure of Hollywood calling, Dylan Conrique feels more comfortable in tiny Loomis, east of Sacramento, with her family’s animals and her friends nearby.

That’s why despite having 2022 single “Birthday Cake” being certified gold, working with iconic pop producer Max Martin on her follow-up and appearing as a series regular on ABC’s cop action/dramedy show “The Rookie,” the 19-year-old moved back home, choosing to commute to L.A. for work instead.

Conrique, who was actually born in Gilroy in the South Bay before her parents moved with her and her siblings to 10 rural acres near the foothills, decided she could have her share of the entertainment industry while keeping the normalcy she had in her life through her childhood.

“The first thing on my mind was getting home and seeing my dogs and the horses, riding my quad and just being … outdoors,” Conrique said. She never desired getting a phone and skipped social media addiction. Instead, she took singing and dance classes and dreamed of performing for a living. Dance became her sport early on. Eventually, her mom found a talent agency in Folsom, where she also took acting classes and fell in love with that. And after one talent convention, she got inspired to move to L.A. to give acting a try.

At 11, she convinced her parents and her young brother—she also has a sister 10 years her senior who’d already moved away from home—to go with her. Her parents sold their pigs, horses and their house.

“We went from 10 acres to just going straight to a one-bedroom apartment with four people,” Conrique said.

Conrique was equally interested in singing and acting at the time, but as she’d never seen any young pop stars at the time, she focused on improving her acting. Selena Gomez and her show “Wizards of Waverly Place” were (and are) personal favorites.

She appeared on various shows like Nickelodeon’s “Henry Danger” before getting a regular role on web series “Chicken Girls.” Then she was offered a record deal, right around the time she first started writing her own songs, around 14 or 15. Her label introduced her to songwriting sessions. That led to a debut EP in 2020, a year before she fortuitously landed the role of Tamara on “The Rookie,” playing a troubled teen who goes on to right her path and becomes a younger sister type to one of the show’s main characters.

With things looking up, she headed back to the studio with a ballad she’d penned about a friend who at 12 years old lost her mother to cervical cancer. That song was the powerful “Birthday Cake.” “I think she’d/ Want you to live like the world’s on fire/ Want you to love like hearts don’t break/ Never look down when you walk the wire/ Like she made it to 48, still made your birthday cake,” Conrique delicately sang.

“Birthday Cake” racked up millions of streams before getting the gold certification from RIAA. And the momentum picked up even more when she went back into the studio for its follow-up, “i miss you (skin to skin).” She was working with producers Johan Carlsson and Mozella in L.A. when she said a luscious-locked man walked in, introduced himself and asked her if they’d met before.

He thought she reminded him of someone (or perhaps he watched “The Rookie”), while she had no idea who he was until her producers told her after getting to work: It was Max Martin.

“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” she said. “His music is the stuff that’s gotten me to dance and to even think about this possibly being a real thing for me in my career.”

It got better. Martin returned an hour later.

“He knocks at the door, and he’s just like, ‘Hey, I’m bored. Can I just come in the session and just write a song with you all?’”

Conrique has worked with him a couple more times since then on songs she hasn’t released yet, she said.

Both “Birthday Cake” and “i miss you” made it onto her second EP, 2023’s Pieces. Dylan Conrique has continued to release singles since then, but her most recent, March’s “last one to love me,” marked a sonic shift that will soon become even more apparent. While her earlier material leaned toward glossy pop, her next chapter will be rootsier, country-influenced fare.

“You come to L.A., and you’re super overwhelmed with so much,” she said. “You want to meet everyone. You wanna see everything. The pop world just kind of took me with it, and I immediately started writing somewhat pop, but what always stuck with me was storytelling. I love being able to tell a story and be specific.”

By the time she released the thematically Western song “When I Go” last year, she’d decided to pursue a more pop-country sound.

Dylan Conrique has fond memories of listening to Sacramento’s KNCI New Country 105.1 FM and falling in love with the music of Luke Bryan and Carrie Underwood. It’s what she listened to from the moment she got out of bed to when she went to sleep. It’s what she had blaring out of her family’s truck when she was dropped off at school. She’s cited Rascal Flatts’ Gary LeVox as a dream collaboration.

“My sister was in the high school rodeo, and I’d hang around. Pretty much all I’d wear was Wranglers and boots growing up,” she said.

Conrique still keeps an apartment in Los Angeles, but after missing home, she and her family moved back to Loomis, living what she calls their “horse life dream.” She’s fine making the five-hour drive to L.A. for work. Her days there are always booked solid from filming to auditioning and recording her music. She said she’s back in her element and has her best friends close by. The move back home had a significant role in the change in her music, she said.

“With my family, I’m the happiest, and on our property, I’m the happiest. With no traffic, I’m the happiest,” she said. “We love our little town.”

Her latest, post-breakup anthem “last one to love me,” pushes the sonic shift into pop-country more. Co-written with Jackson Foote (Kylie Minogue, Zara Larsson, Demi Lovato), Alma Goodman and Brooke Tomlinson—Conrique said she knows a little piano and will be learning guitar but prefers to write with others for now—it’s the first of several releases she has planned in 2024. She’s also planning a songwriting trip to Nashville.

This is in addition to wrapping the sixth season of “The Rookie” (which stars another musical talent; Melissa O’Neil is the season 3 winner of “Canadian Idol”) and auditioning for more parts.

“Going into this year, I’ve been really specific with how I want to sound and how I want to come off,” Conrique said. “My biggest thing is putting my foot in the country world and just kind of going from there.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.