In Conversation With… Emily Hackett

For episode 88 of the podcast, we interview singer-songwriter Emily Hackett on her UK tour, her double-sided project ‘By the Sun,’ ‘By the Moon’ and baring her soul to her family and the world…

How excited are you to come over to the UK? It’s really shaping up to be an awesome week?

Oh my gosh, I’m thrilled it literally worked out beautifully that I’m going to be there and all these shows are falling into place. Yeah I’m so excited and it’s a beautiful time to be over there I think in the fall.

Do you have any idea what to expect from the UK audience? 

It’s been a while since I’ve been back, I have played some shows in the UK before so I feel like i have some sort of expectation but I’m eager to come back with new music and with much more experience as an artist and being comfortable with my audience.

So, you originally grew up in Atlanta, but didn’t start off playing country music. When did you, as an artist, get suckered into country music? 

So I grew up on rock n’ roll because that’s what my dad listened to and he’s really my main music influence. I think the first country record I ever listened to was Shania Twain, and I remember thinking she was just something else. It’s funny, I still look at it the same as I did then – I didn’t listen to it as a country record, I just thought this woman is incredible and I loved her music. The same thing happened with the Dixie Chicks. I didn’t really dive in headfirst figuring out many other country acts until I fell in love with my high school love and he was obsessed with country music, so naturally I became obsessed too.

It’s so funny going back, because I think naturally in life, you view the world in such an unsegmented way when you’re younger  – you don’t separate country into genres? 

I completely agree. Genres have always been kind of a silly thing to me but I understood their necessity at some point, especially when selling physical copies and merchandise, and especially with radio but now that there’s so much music to listen to from every which way. The more music that comes out, the more we are susceptible to hearing every genre, whereas I think in the past our parents and their parents only had access to music from one or two sources and usually it did revolve around the radio, so it was whatever your parents were listening to or whichever station you could get in your car. Now you have access to absolutely anything from all over the world, so I think naturally our influences have just meshed and become this melting pot, and I think that is very cool to say I truly listen to and am inspired by so many genres. 

When did you make the move from Atlanta to Nashville and what do you think that move gave to your music? 

Of course, I think living in Nashville, if anything, taught me how to be a better songwriter. I think I had an innate ability to understand what it meant to be poetic and honest in my lyrics, but Nashville songwriters and co-writing being such a prominent thing here was able to give me a perspective on – is that lyric just something out of my diary or does it relate to someone else? I think that’s the goal as an artist, is of course I want to create something that is art in itself, but there’s no point in doing that unless it means something to someone else. Nashville has taught me how to be a consumer’s writer.

I know one of the big moments in your career was releasing that Lorde’s ‘Royals’ cover. Where did that come in your career trajectory?

I would say that was really in the beginning of it all, I’d been writing songs since the 6th grade and kind of came with every crush that I had and every boyfriend. Then I started to take it a bit more seriously when I figured it was something I could do for a living, and that starry-eyed dream of being an artist became a bit more palpable when I discovered Music City. My journey is an interesting one because when I got to Nashville that big fish in a small pond feeling, didn’t go away necessarily, but I just became fearful of the fact that there are so many talented human beings in the city. I think many people feel that it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, when all of a sudden you’re put in competition with people who are equals or who are better than you, you react in one of two ways. I think my ‘fight or flight’ kicked in and I decided that I really liked the business side of things so I chased that for a little bit. When i decided to do that cover with my friend Megan, it was around the time I had had a few doors close on the business side and I felt the universe pull me back toward the creative side of things. It was a telling thing when that door opened and people started responding to that song, which we weren’t expecting – we were just doing it fun and for ourselves. 

Obviously you’ve toured with a huge amount of crazy, amazing people – like Lady Antebellum – off the back of that. Do you think those live experiences have affected the direction of your music and the music you put out there? 

Oh yeah, I think about learning to write for the people thing – it’s a pretty quick realisation whether a song works or not when you play it for the first time live and if people really respond to it, you know you’ve done something right. The more I’ve got out of myself, and the less that I care about the little mistakes and things like that, the better people respond. I just want to make sure that I continue to put out good energy.

Your project at the moment started off last year with ‘By the Sun’ – the first tracks of the album. Why did you decide to lead out like that with the two sides of the album, it’s such a unique and beautiful concept? 

Thank you. You know it was kind of a funny thing. We recorded the entire album at one time and finished it as a full piece of art. I think that the old-school artist in me wanted to put it out as one piece but I also wanted to grow with my listeners and my generation. We all consume music differently and there’s so much other, that I felt like it was easier to be a new artist to introduce myself a little bit slower rather than pummelling a lot of music at one time. I think our attention spans have changed and there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, you just have to understand as an artist how to grow with that. I sat down with the songs one day and looked at them with strictly a feeling base, I said how does this song make me feel, regardless of tempo etc., I just want to know what it is as my personality. I started drawing little suns or moons by each track depending on how they made me feel and when I finished I looked back and had five suns and five moons. I thought ‘oh my gosh this is how I was meant to do this.’ It was very intuitive. 

Was it an obvious choice to lead out with ‘the suns’ first? 

It was right away that I knew I had to introduce myself with the suns first, as they were unapologetically me, there was nothing to hide about myself there. ‘By the Moon’ was a lot more vulnerable and got a little more raw and real and I wanted to give people the chance to know me before telling them about the mistakes in my past. I wanted to grow with them.

It is a natural way to introduce yourself to people!

Yeah you wouldn’t walk up to people in a bar and say ‘hey, I cheated on my ex-boyfriend.’

Then this year you released the ‘By the Moon.’ Was it exciting or nerve-wracking to reveal that more vulnerable side of yourself? 

Of course, I mean it’s funny obviously my parents have known me for quite a while, when I first started talking about them in interviews and start revealing a little more about the real truth behind these songs, I think that was what made me the most nervous, having to tell the people I love the most, oh by the way this song is actually about this, whereas I think in the past I had even lied about some of it. I had said I wrote it about someone else. I had to come to grips with being honest with the world, my best friends and my family. 

It’s  a scary one baring your soul to the world… What was the one you were the most scared and which you were the most scared to put out there?

I think I was most scared to put out ‘Easy,’ just because that was a big relationship in my life and I learned the most about myself and what I’m capable of. It’s a hard truth to come to grips with, and I chose to work on myself and I don’t want to do this again. I think it was one of my most favourite songs on the record, but I still have this soft spot for ‘Gave Him Away,’ just because I wrote it by myself – that for me is a meaningful thing just because of how much I write with other writers. It was a moment that I had to stand back and again look at myself and think I can’t do that again. 

Scary but liberating…

Yeah liberating is a great word for the whole EP.

What did you want people to take away from the project then? 

I think mostly I just wanted to introduce myself in the most well-rounded way that I possibly could to the world. These are songs that I didn’t just write in a year, these were written over several years, me in my early twenties figuring out how to be a good person and how to live my truest self, and I finally was able to find that. I wanted to introduce myself in the most honest way I could and to in turn invite them to do the same and let people know you aren’t the only ones who has had other thoughts about a person outside your relationship, you aren’t the only one who has screwed up and let somebody go and now you miss them. Every song had a message that felt important to me.

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Final Few

Wine or whiskey? Whiskey.

Would you rather give up songwriting or performing? I guess performing.

What record couldn’t you live without if you were stuck on a desert island? Led Zeppelin’s IV

What record are you listening to on repeat at the moment? I’ve been listening to a lot of Sasha Stallone

Who would be your dream collaboration? I would love to write with Sheryl Crowe.

What’s your road trip essential? A little mini watercolour kit from my husband.

Complete the sentence…

Music is… Happiness.

Country music is… Community.

Emily Hackett is… Honest.