INTERVIEW: Alana Springsteen on New Single California

Alana Springsteen is fast making her mark on the Nashville scene. With over 22 million streams already under her belt, she has today released her phenomenal new single ‘California‘ that is also her best track to date. Here, we interview Alana about her journey so far. 

Hey, how are you? 

I’m so good.

I’ve just been listening to your new single California. Your vocal on it is incredible and I’m so excited for it to be released.

You’re so sweet that means the absolute world. I’ve been so excited for this one to come out. We wrote it at the end of last year and it just feels like the perfect summer jam.

What was the immediate sonic and lyrical inspiration for the track then?

I love to tell vivid stories with my songs, but it’s just as important to me that the melody and instrumentation also takes the listener on a journey. The same way words can tell stories and elicit emotions, so can a melody and sounds. I wanted ‘California’ to have a nostalgic, fantasy-like quality to it and that’s how my co-producers (Jared Keim, Jerry Flowers) and I approached building the song and layering the tracks. We doubled up on the vocal throughout and stacked the harmonies. That, in addition to the reverb and compression on the vocal, gave it the dream-like feel I was looking for. To balance it out, the pedal steel and driving rhythm of the acoustic guitar helped keep everything grounded.

‘California’ is about intense connection, whether to a person or a place. It’s that moment when everything perfectly collides in the form of a magical, unforgettable experience. We often look back on those moments to try to figure out how and why they were so idyllic, but we can’t. I tried to recreate that in the lyrics and sounds of ‘California.’ In my mind, you’ll listen to this on a sunset drive, windows down, wind blowing through your hair, and let it take you back to a time and place you’ll never forget.

Obviously this comes off the back of ‘Trying Not To’ – did you see the response to that track? I feel like you keep showcasing your sound in totally new ways.

Honestly that was one of my goals too with this next batch of songs. This project we’ve got coming this year was just to show the fans different sides of my artistry. I think I’ve realized over the past year that there’s this ‘night drive’ side of me that’s very moody and atmospheric and ethereal and then there’s this other side that’s the stadium bangers that everyone’s hopefully going to be jumping at. I just want to give people more sides of me, because I have a lot of different influences and I love seeing all that come out.

It’s definitely starting to come through and the more you release the more we’re seeing the full picture of who you are as an artist.

Yeah, exactly and it’s crazy, I’ve only had music out for like a year and a half to two years. It’s been such a wild journey – longer than that – but it’ll be a good year for sure, I’m excited.

You moved to Nashville from Virginia back when you were 14. First of all, did you always know that was going to happen?

So, I’ve been doing music, literally ever since I can remember – it was my first love. I grew up singing in my granddad’s churches as they were both pastors, so that’s kind of where it first came about. I started playing guitar when I was seven – I was singing before I could talk, it was my heart. I remember when I was nine years old, I wrote my first song and kind of put my love of stories and lyrics together with music, it changed my world and I knew it was going to be something I did forever. I can just express myself and say things in my songs that I can’t even explain – otherwise, I wouldn’t even tell anybody any other way. It was this form of expression that was so surreal, just insane. Literally, when I was 9 or 10 – I know this sounds crazy – I just felt like I was meant to be a country artist.

That just shows that it was right. 

Totally, I think my parents recognize that, especially because nobody in my family does music. It was this thing that came out of nowhere that I felt in my heart and I think they saw that. They saw my passion for writing and everything and I’m so thankful to them because they’ve always been the people that have encouraged those dreams. I think they can go two ways – some parents are like you can’t do music, but my parents were the opposite end of that, they completely supported me. They actually took me to Nashville for the first time when I was 10 years old.

I love hearing parents being that supportive – it’s so cool.

It is, I mean they didn’t know anything about music, but they were like, we want to figure this out, we want to help you pursue it any way we can. So, we came to Nashville and I did some of my first co-writing sessions – I didn’t even know that was a thing until I got here. I’m sure you can imagine – my love of writing on my own was so high, but it was magnified when you get in the room with other people that think the same way.

I guess you can bounce ideas off each other and almost start with an idea in your head of where you thought the song was going to go but when you talk to people it becomes something completely different.

Exactly, it’s truly magical and I’m still so obsessed with it. I learned that there’s so many different parts of the industry – from the outsider you see the artists and the label but you don’t realise the team behind it – and that resonated with me. I was like, ‘okay, I can see the path’. Now I know what this looks like, I’m just gonna throw myself along into it, so from that point, we would take quarterly trips to Nashville – I’d come in for like a week and write and meet people and kind of just develop that community. When I was 14, the next milestone was getting offered my first publishing deal. I was offered a deal from BMG  and I just felt so at home there. There were people at those companies that were mentors to me on the writing side and the business side – they helped me grow and truly find my voice. I knew it was the right move and my parents supported me. So, I literally picked up my entire family – my younger brothers too – and we moved from Virginia Beach to Nashville and nothing has ever been the same since.

And now it’s all coming together! ‘Trying Not To’ was one of the first big introductions, for me personally, to your music and that really stuck with me. Can you talk a bit about that track and the writing room and how the idea developed?

So, we wrote ‘Trying Not To’ last year amidst all the COVID craziness – that’s one thing I would say that came out of that year was a lot of great songs that I’ve never been more excited about. It was our first write that day and we just set up our team and were like ‘let’s see what happens.’ We got in the room with him [Roman Alexander] – he works a lot with Jared Keim and Jerry Flowers – and it was my first time meeting all of them. I just walked in and sat down and just started throwing out some ideas. I remember Jerry had brought in this little piano loop that he was playing – he was like, ‘this could be a cool vibe for the day’. I’m a very melodically driven person – there might be a loop going or some chords – and I’ll start humming and singing over it that’s how we landed on the chorus, melody and all of that. I remember what was different about this write was that we didn’t really start with a hook – the hook kind of materialised later. We wanted to switch it up [the vocal arrangement] and instead of one verse then the other, I think the idea itself is about two people going back and forth – you’re not right for each other, but you just keep going back. I wanted to mirror that tension in the verses, this give and take. It felt so special and then they built a little demo around it. Even just getting that back, it had this energy and I was like, ‘This is what I’ve wanted to write for so long’. It just felt right and obviously Roman’s voice brings so much to it.

I think both your vocals together – there’s just something so seamless about it and there’s something so special about your vocals melding together.

That means the world to hear you say that. It felt like that to our teams too and I think you can’t plan that.

At the end of the day, you can have two incredibly talented artists get in a room together but it doesn’t work, so it was perfect that it did. 

Yeah, we both felt passionate about it, I knew I wanted to release it and kind of make a statement at the top of this year with that song. So at that point, I got in the studio with Jerry and Jared and just got really strategic about the sounds and vocal treatment. I like to be really hands on with production – I think I’m so inspired by sounds and how you can use instruments to create emotion. It’s so fun to me and I have all these ideas swirling in my head and they were incredible just about collaborating with me on that and figuring it out.

I think that approach of being so hands-on with your artistry is so important and it really comes through in your music. 

That’s always been my goal and that’s why I think that collaboration works so well. I just want my fans to know that I’m so purposeful with my art, I want them to see me and every piece of it – whether it’s an outfit I wear on my Instagram or a song that comes out or the lyrics. I want them to know it’s me and it’s coming from my heart – that was really important to me. I just feel like this song was the perfect marriage between the two sides of me – the night side and the stadium side – it’s the perfect jumping tempo.

It’ll be so fun to play live when shows come back. 

Oh, I cannot wait for that day!

Thank you so much for the time today Alana – I’m so excited to hear all the new music to come. 

You’re so sweet. It was so great to talk to you.

 

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