This little love song started off from hearing one of my close friends at the beginning of a new relationship. As she describes her excitement and nerves with having very real feelings, it reminded me of my relationship with my husband - the beginning stages. It’s no ordinary feeling when you realize you are in a relationship with the right one. They say you know when you know. Maybe that’s not true for eveyone’s love story but it was for ours. The sentiment of “I got it Bad” was realizing that despite past heartbreaks leaving me jaded, I couldn’t help but fall madly in love with this person. My heart knew it before my head could catch up. I gifted this song to my husband on our 5th wedding anniversary. I figured if I’m going to keep writing breakup bops (because don’t you worry, those won’t stop), I gotta tell the world all about the safety & security of this loving relationship I’ve found myself in. Shoutout to supportive partners everywhere!! Especially the ones who support a creative because we can be a little hard to love sometimes ;) Melodically speaking, I also wanted to write a song that challenged me vocally & boy, did I do just that (jury’s still out on if I could ever do this live)! But I always want to challenge myself & give different pieces of ear candy to the listener to keep them engaged. Soulful vocal riffs/BGVs have my heart & I had to get 3 singers on this to add some ~ spice ~ to help fill in the song a bit. Country twin duo, Jaye Madison, and soulful songbird, Arlana, were the 3 vocalists that made “I got it Bad” better than I could’ve imagined. This song was a fun way to get out of my comfort zone, while also sending some love to my sweet husband.
‘Takes Me Over’ is one I’d been most excited to share because it sonically feels like songs I tend to gravitate toward in my regular listening (retro pop 80s synth with a *hint* of soul) — I had the best time creating it. My producer, Stephen Hall, had been in this with me since the beginning when I handed him song that was just days old. I was captivated by this track from the first listen & knew we had something special brewing. My other collaborator, Brianna Perez, added the final edits to really polish the song. I hope to write more songs like this one. So here’s the true story behind the song… a friend of mind dated a total a**hole and had just been working through the break up. One of the themes I wanted to drive home in the song was the idea that we can fall for someone’s potential and forget to face the reality of who there are presently. As Maya Angelou said, “When people show you who they are, believe them.” I had been in this position with someone before so I felt the emotions of the heartbreak with her — the anger, the frustration, the grief. Thankfully, that once heartbroken friend is living her best life, married to an amazing person who treats her like the QUEEN she is - woohoo!! We love a redemptive storyline!!! This wasn’t the first and it probably won’t be the last break up bop I put out — stay tuned!
During quarantine in 2020, I began writing and processing my experience with mental health - specifically my suicide attempt in 2014. I had a distinct, vivid memory come to my mind while writing - the morning after, as I woke up still feeling numb, I pulled back the curtains in my room, unsure of what time it was, only to be greeted by the warmest, brightest sunlight on my face. It overwhelmed me and I could feel myself come back into my body again, as if I had been dissociating as a dark cloud floating over my head. Amidst my tired, broken spirit, I felt relief in my body. I wanted to write that feeling. I wrote “would you let the light in?” as a gentle invitation from the perspective of one friend to another friend struggling with suicidal ideation. I wanted this song to be a safe place for those who feel alone or struggling to reach out for help. On September 20th, in honor of the 7 year anniversary of my suicide attempt, I released my song ‘would you let the light in?’. Since this song and topic are both so important to me, I wanted to make sure I made it extra special, especially with September being Suicide Awareness Month. Every Monday night during that month, I was joined by some special guests on my WYLTLI (Would You Let The Light In) IG Live series to raise awareness to help end the stigma around mental health. You can check out the entire series on my instagram.
“Get Over You” started off with me simply wanting to write an upbeat song & the lyric “a heart don’t break all at once” stuck in my head. I asked my San Antonio, TX gal pal Brittany Marshall to join me in the writer’s room. As two people who have experienced heartbreak in this lifetime, we started to write through the process of a break up with the lyric “a heart don’t break all at once” as a guiding line. There is a cyclical nature to healing from a heartbreak. There’s the initial denial saying you’re fine to everyone then crying to sad girl music alone in your car after running into them for the first time post break up. Then there are days (maybe months after) you are convinced you’re over it then a specific song comes on shuffle or you drive by a place that holds a hard-to-forget memory and a little piece of your heart breaks all over again. Even as a few years go by and you’re both happy with other people, there is the tiniest part that lastly grieves the life you once thought would be with that person. Though you know things are as they should be, it seems heartbreak can be such a fickle thing.
Volatile Weekly — Your Best Life Nashville — Hot Sounds in the City — Bsquared Magazine
Graphic by @blushingplanet
"Wildflowers" is a song about the unexpected beauty and renewed reclamation of my younger self—celebrating who I was before the world told me who I should be & honoring who I became through my experiences. Growing up in Texas, I remember the warm summer rainstorms bringing beautiful wildflowers alongside the highways—filling fields with an abundance of color. This song was inspired by that nostalgia and a deep longing to see the beauty of a child-like freedom return to me. Like I said when I introduced y’all to this new artist project, I want to create “music that feels like a friend” and what I’ve come to learn about friendship over the years is that before you can be a good friend to others, you have to be a good friend to yourself. It was important for me to share this song first because I wrote it to myself as a reminder to reclaim the parts of me that had been lost—to reclaim the wildflowers.
