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Women artists lead this week’s crop of stellar new songs, including Hailey Whitters‘ somber examination of grief and friendship, as well as Sierra Hull’s shimmering new bluegrass offering and Lanie Gardner’s raw, rock-fueled new track.
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Check out all of these and more in Billboard‘s roundup of several top new country, bluegrass and Americana tracks of the week.
Hailey Whitters, “Casseroles”
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ACM Award winner Whitters, known for her charming, sunny songs such as “Everything She Ain’t,” returns with her first new music since 2023. This time, she offers a somber ballad reflecting on how the pain, loss and realities of a life irrevocably shifted by the passing of a loved one don’t pause for those navigating grief. In the song’s later verses, the song veers more introspective, as Whitters ponders the caliber of friend she has been to those going through grief–a friend whose concern is fleeting, or one who keeps showing up with long-term support. Whitters is known for her own wisdom-filled songwriting prowess, but on this elegantly-instrumented ballad, written by Hillary Lindsey, James Slater and Tom Douglas, Whitters gives a reminder that her nimble voice is a potent emotional translator.
Sierra Hull, “Boom”
Multi-IBMA Award winner Hull is set to release her first album in five years (and first independently-released project) on March 7, with A Tip Toe High Wire. The lead single from that project is a slab of sparkling mandolin, steady acoustic guitar, syncopated rhythms and high-flying harmonies. Written by Hull and Adam Wright, “Boom” has been part of Hull’s live shows for a couple of years. Hull wraps her conversational, angelic vocal around lyrics of moving past mistakes and regrets to embrace new eras of hope and love. “Promises break like little figurines,” she sings knowingly, but reminds listeners that it takes is a heart-shifting moment to turn heartbreak to love.
Lanie Gardner, “Buzzkill”
Gardner has seen her musical profile ascend thanks to her breakthrough cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” and having a song included on the blockbuster Twisters: The Album. She follows it with this funky, bold takedown of a certified “mean girl,” turning this defiant blast of wisdom into a communal rallying cry. Gardner’s voice is at once searing and sultry, and she stands from a crowded pack of country music newcomers by infusing her music with seething rock fusions.
Emily Ann Roberts, “Easy Does It”
On her previous debut album, Can’t Hide Country, Roberts cemented her current status as one of country music’s most engaging, neo-traditional voices. She follows that project with this new song, one in which her butter-soft voice in a single breath encapsulates both the sting of painful memories and the emotional exhale of relief at a current romantic situation. “I thought doors were meant to slam/hate and love went hand in hand,” she sings, reflecting on an emotionally-battering relationship, juxtaposing that past toxic experience with her present easygoing, faith-restoring love. Roberts wrote this song with Jason Haag and Autumn Buysse.
The Droptines, “Old Tricks”
Texas band The Droptines formed in 2019 and has since been growing their audience in a time-tested, one-show-at-a-time fashion, becoming an in-demand live act. The group’s unfiltered alt-country sound continues on “Old Tricks,” written by The Droptines frontman and lyricist Conner Authur. “I try to change, but I’m a stray after all,” he sings, musing about brief romantic flings and jilted lovers that war with an un-dimming desires. The Droptines released their self-titled project last year, and keep building their reputation as a must-hear group.
Willow Avalon, “The Actor”
Avalon’s vivid songwriting and signature vocal warble have commanded attention with her previously released songs such as “Gettin’ Rich and Goin’ Broke.” Here, she pours her distinct drawl over a tale of rueful reflection over romantic mistakes on this song from her newly released project Southern Bell Raisin’ Hell. “I was a fool and he was an actor,” she sings over robust guitars. The song teems with regrets over a ex-lover, but Avalon sings it with a grit that seems to suggest someone who’s learned the lessons and moved on with defiant confidence.
Olivia Wolf, “The Veil”
Northern California native Olivia Wolf transcends the boundaries between temporal and the ethereal, blending incisive, observant lyricism with elements of bluegrass, folk and country. Wolf’s debut album Silver Rounds released today (Jan. 17), featuring tracks including the somber song “The Veil,” which Wolf wrote with Sean McConnell. Backed by sparse guitar, she ponders the fast-arriving sense of loss on lyrics such as “I won’t be here tomorrow/ But this midnight is ours.” Her voice is imbued with an earthy elegance as the song slowly builds around her, frothing into dramatic tension before concluding with a feeling of stoic resignation as she sings, “It’s heavy sometimes seeing behind the veil.” This album marks Wolf as an astute singer-songwriter well worth listening to.
Charlie Puth is saying goodbye to his TikTok followers as a ban of the app looms large in the United States. The hitmaker shared a video of himself playing piano on the platform. After propping up his camera to the side of the keyboard, Puth wordlessly dives into a mellow arrangement of his and Wiz […]
In our Latin Remix of the Week series, we spotlight remixes that the Billboard Latin and Billboard Español editors deem exceptional and distinct. We might not publish a review every week. This is our selection today. Lola Índigo‘s breakthrough hit “La Reina” — a highly energetic track rich in merengue rhythms and laced with EDM, produced by Andrés Torres and Mauricio Rengifo […]
Though making and distributing music has become easier than ever, the number of tracks being uploaded to digital service providers has fallen — not increased — in the last two years.
In the first quarter of 2023, an average of 120,000 tracks were being uploaded to DSPs each day, up from 93,400 in 2022, according to Luminate. That number dropped to 103,500 for the full year of 2023 and fell further to 99,000 last year, according to the company’s recently released 2024 year-end report. Normally, a decrease in the amount of new music tracked by Luminate wouldn’t merit much attention. But a 4% annual decline in new tracks is notable when today’s creators have an unprecedented number of tools to make music — including easy-to-use digital audio workstations like BandLab and generative artificial intelligence apps such as Suno — and can tap into global distribution.
Music professionals Billboard spoke to for this story pointed to numerous possible explanations for the drop in new tracks, with anti-fraud measures being the most widely cited reason for the decline. Bad actors are known to upload large numbers of tracks through do-it-yourself distributors before hacking into users’ streaming accounts to stream the songs. Erik Söderblom, chief product officer for music distributor Amuse, cites Spotify’s policy changes announced in 2023 to discourage labels and distributors from uploading tracks used to inflate streaming activity for the drop. “It has been a successful way for both of them as a DSP and us as a distributor to discourage fraudulent actors who abuse the system by releasing and monetizing large volumes of audio files through artificial streams,” he says.
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Beatdapp, which can identify when users’ accounts are hijacked and turned into bot farms that unknowingly stream music, has seen fraud rates decrease on the platforms it works with, says CEO Morgan Hayduk. While a small 4% decline in the scheme of millions of new tracks suggests there’s still ample music for these bot farms to illegally stream, Hayduk believes the financial penalties are having their intended effect. “I do think the DIY space is taking their end more seriously and trying not to be a conduit for this,” he says.
French streaming service Deezer introduced an “artist-centric” royalty payout scheme in 2023 to combat fraud and prioritize professional music over “functional” music such as background noise and nature sounds. But given Spotify’s far larger user base, the platform’s anti-fraud measures get more credit for creating outcomes favorable to artists and record labels. For instance, in 2023, Spotify began levying penalties on music distributors and labels when fraudulent tracks they uploaded had been detected. As a result, experts tell Billboard, better policing at the source of the problem could have resulted in distributors being wary of working with some creators.
While the anti-fraud measures may have had the intended effect and prevented some tracks from being uploaded, DistroKid, another self-serve distributor of independent artists, actually sent more tracks to DSPs in 2024 than the prior year. “There wasn’t a decrease in tracks uploaded to streaming services through DistroKid in 2024,” a company spokesperson said in a statement to Billboard. “The average number of tracks uploaded to streaming services each day steadily increased throughout the year.”
As for other, lesser factors, a likely candidate is Spotify’s 2023 decision to set a minimum threshold for royalty payouts at 1,000 streams. The policy received mixed reactions. Some critics called the threshold a penalty for developing artists who rely on royalties to help build their careers. But cutting off payments to the outer reaches of the long tail put Spotify in sync with major labels’ recent push for royalty accounting schemes that reward professional artists at the expense of, as Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge put it in 2023, “merchants of garbage.”
Ending the practice of cutting tiny royalty checks may help DSPs’ goal of prioritizing professional musicians over a sea of unwanted content, but “may also dishearten early-stage artists who struggle to grow their project,” says Söderblom. As a result, fewer uploads would mean fewer new tracks could enter Luminate’s database. Will Page, author of Pivot: Eight Principles for Transforming Your Business, believes that the payout threshold likely had “a material effect on what Luminate gets to count.” After Spotify set a threshold for payouts at 1,000 streams, an artist would experience diminishing returns from uploading more unpopular music. According to Luminate, 93.2 million of the 202.2 million tracks in its database were streamed fewer than 10 times. Page, Spotify’s former chief economist, estimates that 99% of the 99,000 new tracks in 2024 made the recording artist less than $100 in royalties last year.
Anti-fraud measures and artist-centric royalty schemes may not account for all of the decline, though. Another factor could be a natural ebb in the supply of music. Söderblom sees 2022 as “a great year for DIY” because many artists had additional time to work on new music due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The combination of accessible music production and distribution tools and a more or less global lockdown led to a huge influx of releases,” he says. “As the world returns to normal, it seems natural to see the volume of new uploads decline.” The same could be true of video creators. Last week, MIDiA Research declared that “the pandemic-induced content creation boom has peaked” after time spent creating content such as YouTube videos dropped in the second quarter of 2024 — marking the first decline since 2021.
Similarly, the 120,000 tracks uploaded daily in 2022 may have marked a peak of musicians uploading their back catalogs to distributors. MIDiA Research’s Mark Mulligan has surveyed amateur and semi-professional creators for five years. “A lot of them are in their 40s and 50s, and probably a lot are people who have been playing in bar bands and whatever else,” says Mulligan. “And they say, ‘Oh, we’ve got these demos. Let’s put them on Spotify.’ And so, they had a lot of back catalog that hadn’t been digitized before to put up there.” Those tracks weren’t necessarily new, but they were new to DIY distributors and streaming platforms. Once the backlog runs out, these artists may not have any other recordings to distribute.
Yet another explanation is the rise of social media as a destination for new music. Music streaming platforms and DIY distribution have leveled the playing field and given every artist an opportunity to reach listeners around the world. Still, many artists have realized they aren’t the next Taylor Swift and can’t get much traction at services such as Spotify and Apple Music. Streaming can work wonders for big artists, but the promise of democratization “has lost a lot of sheen,” says Mulligan. Small artists who don’t attract a crowd at Spotify can use social media or user-generated platforms such as Audiomack to connect with listeners. “They would rather have a small fan base who they can interact with than a large audience they can’t interact with,” he says. “Add that with the remuneration issue and it’s a much less compelling premise to go on streaming now than it was three, four years ago.”
If Mulligan’s hypothesis is true, the artist-centric approach adopted by Spotify, Deezer and others could end up hurting its biggest proponents: the major labels. Streaming platforms have essentially told long-tail artists, “We’re not going to stop you from coming in, but you’re not really welcome,” says Mulligan, which he thinks could have unintended consequences somewhere down the road. “Stop a generation of artists coming in,” he says, “and there’s a really good risk that you’ll inadvertently stop a generation of fans coming in if those artists go elsewhere to build their fan bases.”
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Mac Miller’s legacy lives on with a new album, Balloonerism, out now, and Amazon is marking the occasion with a new […]
Kendrick Lamar is kicking of 2025 with a bang. The rapper’s monumental hit, “Not Like Us,” has officially surpassed one billion Spotify streams. Lamar’s anthemic track, released in May 2024, marked the end of the highly publicized feud between himself and Drake and became a longstanding hit, topping the Hot 100 for two nonconsecutive weeks. […]
Live Nation’s Crew Nation nonprofit is stepping up to help music workers impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires.
The Crew Nation Global Relief Fund is committing $1 million to assist performing musicians, live music crew and live music industry workers affected by the recent wildfires in Los Angeles, it was announced Friday (Jan. 17). Live Nation established Crew Nation in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic that limited work for live event professionals.
Crew Nation has opened applications for grants up to $5,000 for individuals currently employed within the industry who are facing displacement expenses due to mandatory evacuation orders, damage or loss. Those seeking support can apply for Crew Nation Fund grants here.
“L.A. is home to so many who help make live music possible,” said Live Nation Entertainment president/CEO Michael Rapino in a statement, “and Crew Nation is continuing its core mission of helping this hardworking community through unforeseen hardship.”
In addition, Live Nation is supporting impacted employees from its Los Angeles headquarters with direct relief through its Taking Care of Our Own program.
The live industry giant is also working alongside competitor AEG and the Azoff family to produce and promote FireAid, a benefit concert set for Jan. 30 in Los Angeles. The concert will take place at both the Intuit Dome and the neighboring Kia Forum, with performers including Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Jelly Roll, Gwen Stefani, Tate McRae, Rod Stewart, Sting, Stevie Nicks, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dave Matthews, John Mayer, Green Day, Gracie Abrams, Joni Mitchell, Lil Baby, P!nk, Stephen Stills and Earth, Wind & Fire, with more to be added.
FireAid will be broadcast at select AMC Theatres and via Apple Music and the Apple TV App, Max, iHeartRadio, KTLA+, Netflix/Tudum, Paramount+, SiriusXM, Spotify, SoundCloud, Veeps, YouTube, and Prime Video and the Amazon Music Channel on Twitch. Viewers will be able to contribute to the fundraiser as they watch.
Since Crew Nation’s 2020 launch, the nonprofit has helped get assistance to more than 16,000 crew globally thanks to a $10 million contribution from Live Nation, supplemented by $8 million from artists, fans and industry partners. Anyone looking to support live music artists and crews through the L.A. wildfires can donate to the organization here.
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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a ban on red dye No. 3, a popular food additive used in food, drinks, and some drugs. The FDA established decades ago that red dye No. 3 had links to certain types of cancer and will no longer be used in the United States.
The FDA issued a constituent update this past Wednesday (Jan. 15) stating the agency’s decision to ban the use of the food additive, citing the “Delaney Clause” from the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act).
From the FDA:
The FDA is revoking the authorization for the use of FD&C Red No. 3 as a matter of law, based on the Delaney Clause of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act). The FDA is amending its color additive regulations to no longer allow for the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs in response to a 2022 color additive petition. The petition requested the agency review whether the Delaney Clause applied and cited, among other data and information, two studies that showed cancer in laboratory male rats exposed to high levels of FD&C Red No. 3 due to a rat specific hormonal mechanism. The way that FD&C Red No. 3 causes cancer in male rats does not occur in humans. Relevant exposure levels to FD&C Red No. 3 for humans are typically much lower than those that cause the effects shown in male rats. Studies in other animals and in humans did not show these effects; claims that the use of FD&C Red No. 3 in food and in ingested drugs puts people at risk are not supported by the available scientific information.
The Delaney Clause, enacted in 1960 as part of the Color Additives Amendment to the FD&C Act, prohibits FDA authorization of a food additive or color additive if it has been found to induce cancer in humans or animals. This is not the first time the agency revoked an authorization based on the Delaney Clause. For example, in 2018, the FDA revoked the authorization for certain synthetic flavors based on the Delaney Clause in response to a food additive petition.
Red dye No. 3 is a synthetic food dye derived from petroleum and erythrosine is its true chemical name. The dye isn’t used as widely as other dyes but appears in candies, cakes, cookies, frozen desserts, and ingested drugs. Food manufacturers will have until January 15, 2027, to eliminate the dye from their products. Comparatively, drug companies have until January 18, 2028, to do the same.
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Photo: Getty
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It’s finally here! The Playoff National Championship presented by AT&T has been weeks in the making and features two NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision high-level teams looking to hoist to the CFP National Championship trophy on field at the end of the season.
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The No. 8-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes (13-2) take on the No. 7-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish (14-1) at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, on Monday, Jan. 20.
When Does Ohio State vs. Notre Dame Start?
The Ohio State vs. Notre Dame game broadcasts live, with kickoff at 7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m. PT. The game airs on ESPN.
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Where to Watch Ohio State vs. Notre Dame for Free
For cord-cutters, there are a few ways to watch Ohio State Buckeyes vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish — especially if you want to watch for free. DirecTV Stream has a five-day free trial, while other streaming services — such as Hulu + Live TV — also offer a free trial so you can watch ESPN for free.
Keep reading for more details on how to watch the Ohio State-Notre Dame game with DirecTV Stream and Hulu + Live TV.
How to Watch Ohio State vs. Notre Dame With DirecTV Stream
A subscription to DirecTV Stream — which comes with ESPN for Ohio State vs. Notre Dame — gets you access to live TV, local and cable channels, starting at $74.99 per month. The service even offers a five-day free trial to watch for free if you sign up now.
You can watch local networks such as NBC, ABC, Fox, and PBS, while you can also watch many cable networks, including FS1, Lifetime, FX, AMC, A&E, Bravo, BET, MTV, Paramount Network, Cartoon Network, VH1, Fuse, CNN, Food Network, CNBC and many others.
How to Watch Ohio State vs. Notre Dame With Hulu + Live TV
The Ohio State Buckeyes vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish game on ESPN is available to watch with Hulu + Live TV too. Prices for the cable alternative start at $82.99 per month, while each plan comes with Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ at no additional cost.
Hulu + Live TV might be best for those who want all of these streaming services together in one bundle. It also features many other networks, including ABC, Hallmark Channel, BET, CMT, Disney Channel, NBC, Fox Sports and more.
Who Is Performing During Ohio State vs. Notre Dame Halftime Show?
While the Ohio State University Marching Band and the Band of the Fighting Irish marching bands are scheduled to perform at halftime during the CFP National Championship, Grammy Award-winning R&B star Coco Jones is set to perform “The Star-Spangled Banner” before kickoff.
How to Buy Ohio State vs. Notre Dame Tickets Online
Want to attend the Ohio State-Notre Dame game in person? There are still last-minute tickets to the CFP National Championship game available via Vivid Seats (get $20 off purchases of $200 and over with code BB2024), SeatGeek (your first purchases can get $10 off ticket order $250 and with code BILLBOARD10), StubHub and GameTime (score $20 off ticket orders of $150 and over with code SAVE20). Prices vary depending on the city and seats available.
Moreover, you can save $150 off when you spend $500 with promo code BILLBOARD150, or $300 off when you spend $1,000 with promo code BILLBOARD300 at TicketNetwork.com.
AT&T Deals
For 2025, AT&T is sponsoring the game (including the AT&T Playoff Playlist Live concert series with performance by Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, 2 Chainz, Camila Cabello and others in the lead up to game day), so if you’re looking to pick up a new smartphone, earbuds or phone plan, now if the best time to save big. We rounded up the best deals on AT&T.com, below:
Get $200 off per line when you order online, AT&T
Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max, $5.56/mo. (reg. $33.34/mo.), AT&T
Apple iPhone 15, $ 5.99/mo. (reg. $20.28/mo.), AT&T
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, $8.34/mo. (reg. $36.12/mo.), AT&T
Google Pixel 9 Pro, $0.00/mo. (reg. $29.17/mo.), AT&T
Samsung Galaxy Buds2 Wireless Earbuds, $75 (reg. $149.99), AT&T
Belkin Soundform Motion True Wireless Earbuds, $25 (reg. $49.99), AT&T
Starting at 7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m. PT, College Football Playoff National Championship 2025: Ohio State Buckeyes vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish broadcasts on ESPN. It’s also available to livestream on DirecTV Stream for free on Monday, Jan. 20.
Want more? For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best Xbox deals, studio headphones and Nintendo Switch accessories.
On the first day of recording her debut album, Jasmine Cruickshank found herself in one of the most famous recording studios in the world, squeezed into a tiny room and singing with three other people — two of whom were Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus.
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Cruickshank, the British singer-songwriter who performs as Jasmine.4.t, had just arrived in Los Angeles from her home in Manchester, and had met her band mate Phoenix Rousiamanis at Sound City Studios, the birthplace of albums like Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush and Nirvana’s Nevermind. “Phoebe was giving us a tour of the studio, because that was where Punisher was recorded,” Cruickshank tells Billboard. “She took me, Phoenix and Lucy in the Echo Chamber, which is this concrete room where they create natural reverbs and just has this really beautiful sound. And they were like, ‘Oh, let’s sing a song!’”
The quartet began harmonizing on “Kitchen,” the wounded, finger-picked folk song which would become the first track on the first Jasmine.4.t album. Cruickshank exhales thinking about the sing-along. “It was just this beautiful moment,” she says.
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It was one that would have been unimaginable for Cruickshank just a few years ago. A trans woman who came out in 2021, Cruickshank spent months without a home after her marriage fell apart, alienated from loved ones who did not accept her — but also embracing her new identity, finding uplift in Manchester’s queer community, and experiencing the joy of her first trans romance.
The highs and lows of that whirlwind experience are captured in brilliant detail on You Are the Morning, her debut album released on Friday (Jan. 17). Although Jasmine.4.t’s songs span different iterations of indie rock — guitars whoosh on “Skin On Skin” and are gently strummed on “Best Friend’s House,” while piano and strings are effectively dotted across the album — her soft, subtly powerful voice remains the album’s foundation, an uncompromising instrument sharing a one-of-a-kind story.
Not only is Jasmine.4.t the first U.K. signee on Bridgers’ label, Saddest Factory Records, but You Are the Morning was produced by Bridgers, Dacus and Julien Baker, the three members of the arena-level indie supergroup Boygenius. Their individual presences are felt throughout the album — Bridgers duets on the mid-tempo rocker “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation,” for instance, and all three members sing backing vocals on the hushed ballad “Highfield” — in a way that will delight Boygenius completists. Plus, Jasmine.4.t and her all-trans backing band will be opening for Dacus on her North American headlining tour, which kicks off in April.
Yet You Are the Morning stands on its own as a breathtaking debut, which is why Jasmine.4.t is Billboard’s inaugural Rock/Alternative Rookie of the Month. Below, Cruickshank discusses her personal journey, her friendship with Dacus, creating art alongside the trans community, and more. [Editor’s note: this interview was been condensed for clarity.]
How did the label deal with Saddest Factory come together?
I knew Phoebe through Lucy, and I knew Lucy pre-transition. I used to play in this two-piece garage rock band, and we opened for Sunflower Bean, and the promoter didn’t pay us. We and Sunflower Bean were [arguing] with the promoter as a consequence, and the boss of the promotion company was like, “You’ll never play in this town again!” But then the local promoter was like, “Don’t worry about him. I’ll make sure you get some really nice shows off the back of this horrible experience.”
One of the shows that he got me was a solo show opening for Lucy Dacus, on her first album tour. And then we just got on so well — we had pizza next door before the show. Lucy was like, “I’d love to have you along for my next tour in Europe,” which was for the Historian album, which I f–king love. We really bonded on that tour, and then we kept in touch, and sent each other downloads, quite a lot.
I got really sick during lockdown, and I had a lot of time alone with my thoughts — insulated from the societal pressures and expectations of masculinity. And I was like, “You know what? I think I’m gonna transition.” And Lucy was actually one of the first people that I came out to, and Lucy was a lot more accepting than a lot of the other people in my life.
I ended up having to escape my marriage and Bristol, my hometown. I came to stay with some friends up in Manchester, and was sleeping on sofas and floors, and in people’s spare rooms for a while. That was when I wrote the songs that are on the album, and I was sending them back and forth with Lucy as well. And she was like, “Oh, I’d love to produce your music.”
I submitted a little demo playlist to Saddest Factory. A few months later, Lucy was like, “We just listened to your demos in the car, and Phoebe is now on the phone with her manager, talking about signing you.” And then I opened for Boygenius when they came to to the UK, which was wild, and then I think it was the next day that I signed.
How did all three members of Boygenius become so involved with creating the album?
I formed a band of trans women here in Manchester, and the label flew us out to L.A. to record at Sound City Studios. Lucy has already said that she wanted to produce, and when Phoebe signed me, she was like, “Actually, I want to produce the record.” Then Phoebe called me before we flew out and said, “Actually, I think Julien’s gonna be in town, so we’re thinking — we’re all gonna produce, together.”
I can’t even imagine what it was like to hear that.
I was like, “This is the best thing that’s ever gonna happen to me.” It was so cool working with them all in the studio. They all brought so much to the recording process, and seeing them work together, it’s so cool how ego-less they all are when interacting — it so easy to create with them, just a very chill environment.
They’ve obviously built this way of working together and creating their records, this routine, and part of that routine is Julien’s ’tone quest,’ where Julien would spend a good hour or two selecting guitars, selecting amplifiers, selecting pedals, different microphones. It’s something that I’d never put too much thought into myself before, but then just seeing Julien talk about guitar tones, it just gave me so much joy and warmth. Having Julien solos on a few of the songs — in particular, I f–king love the solos on “Skin on Skin” — they just really make the tracks.
Your songwriting contains so many details about the singular journey you’ve taken as a person. How healing of a process to put this album together, and finish songs that were written at a very different point in your life?
It’s insane thinking about where I was when I was writing these songs — I was really struggling, honestly. I thought I was already dead — I had this persistent delusion that I had died, and that I was living as some kind of ghost or zombie. “Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation” is about that experience.
And thinking about now, where I’ve found my people, I’m in my own home, I own this house, I have a whole new family. I’ve gone to L.A. and recorded an album with Lucy and Phoebe and Julien, and I have a band, and it’s all trans women. I never could have anticipated this, and it has been very healing. And I hope that it can bring some kind of hope for a brighter future for other trans women as well who’ve been through similar situations.
I think what I’ve been through is sadly a very common experience for a lot of trans women. So many trans people experience homelessness. I’ve experienced a lot of street violence, and that’s very common as well. Not to mention suicide, sadly. Right now in the U.K. and in the U.S., it’s a horrible time to come out as a trans woman — it’s not safe. And it’s kind of terrifying doing what I’m doing right now and being so visible. I get a lot of s–t on the streets and online, as all trans women do. But I think it’s worth it because I get so much love, and so many [positive] messages. Just today, someone was like, “I just listened to ‘Elephant’ for the first time, I transitioned like 10 years ago, and I don’t think that anyone has captured these feelings of loving someone as a trans person for the first time as accurately.”
I think we’re going through so much as a community. Every November, we have a day called Trans Day of Remembrance, where we list all of the trans people who have died by violence over the past year — and this year was more than any other year before. It’s such a tiny community, and we all feel so close to death, we all feel so close to these experiences, whether we’re lucky enough to have a stable life or not. It’s difficult for people who don’t experience that to grasp, and I think that we often feel so distanced from society at large as a consequence. We often meet friction when our needs aren’t met or we’re not understood, and even well-meaning people can play into systemic imbalances that we see when we’re so underrepresented in the music industry, or society at large. It means a lot for people to feel seen and understood, and I feel very lucky to be able to provide that through my music — and to be able to talk about these things on a more mainstream, visible platform.
You mentioned your band of all trans women, and you also worked with the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles on the final song, “Woman.” Considering this moment in history, what has it been like to be surrounded by other members of the trans community while performing?
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said “this moment in history,” because it did feel like we were making history. There were so many moments where we looked around in this iconic studio, that has meant so much to music history, are were all very aware of what those moments [meant]. On the last day in the Studio A live room, which is the biggest live room at Sound City — to be in there, recording in a room completely full of trans people, it just felt like such a magical moment.
I think we were all aware of the cultural and societal context that is the backdrop for this album, and how important it is to be spotlighting trans artists and raising each other up, and how terrifying it is to be visible. It was incredibly emotional. I remember there was a moment where Phoenix was conducting the chorus, and I looked around, and Lucy had tears in her eyes, just watching it all happen.
We definitely all felt that we were creating this piece of history, and I hope that it can be remembered that we filled that space with trans people. But even if it’s not, to us personally, it just meant so much.