Gabby Barrett has taken the world by storm since her stint on American Idol, with the release of her formidable track ‘I Hope’ and further collaboration on the track with Charlie Puth. Now, she chats to us about the track, her debut record Goldmine and gives her verdict on whether there was space for Jack on the float.
Hi Gabby, how are you doing?
I am good, how are you?
Not bad! Congratulations on Goldmine, it is an absolutely incredible debut album, how good does it feel to have it finally out in the world?
Oh my gosh, everything that’s happened in the past year has been insane from ‘I Hope’ to now the album breaking records, the craziness… I don’t think there’s one word that can encapsulate something like this. It’s just been absolutely amazing.
Obviously, it’s incredible how well ‘I Hope’ did, but it must have been kind of daunting to see the single go to number one, did it feel more intimidating to release the record, because you had to live up to the success of ‘I Hope?’
I was actually more excited to release an album because of what happened with ‘I Hope’ because it had caught so much attention and so many eyes in different places, so everybody’s been asking for an album, but we pushed ‘I Hope’ for a while there. I’ve been writing for the past two years, so now that it’s finally come, I was really excited because I worked really hard on this album, making sure it was a full body of work – I had a large hand in the creativity, I wrote 12 of the 13 songs and there was a lot of variety, so I was really excited for people to hear this project.
Faith is such a huge focus and grounding point for this record. Religion has been such a foundation for country music, but over the past few years that’s definitely fallen to the background. Was that a really conscious decision? I feel like it was a very powerful decision that enabled this record to cut through..
Thank you, I think a lot of people are really scared to speak up about faith for many reasons, but it was something that I really wanted to make sure that people knew about me, it’s such a huge part of who I am as a person. You look on my social media, at my music – you’ll see and hear about it, it was something that was very important to me and is the centre of who I am. For the album, I was influenced by so many genres growing up and what my parents played around me. With so many eyes looking from ‘I Hope’ I thought it was the perfect time – we don’t live in a time where there’s only one genre of music, everything has blurred together, so it was fun to write an album with so much variety on it and it was just really well-timed, I’m excited to be making music right now.
Building on that, you’ve had more experience than a lot of people will have at thirty years old, you played so many shows even before American Idol happened. Do you think that enabled you to know what you wanted to say with this record? I don’t think a lot of people come to the realisation of what they want to create and sound like till much later in their career.
Thank you. I had performed for so many years before I did American Idol, so I definitely went through a lot of trial and error. I didn’t get into writing though till a couple of years ago seriously, I would say during American Idol was when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to say with my music and how I wanted to write songs. That was when I started to dig into the Nashville community of songwriters, and so really I would say after the last couple of years was when I started following along with me and where things have gone and what’s important to me – that’s why you hear a love song after I got married and ‘I Hope’ was about a high school relationship, then you have ‘Got Me’ which is a Christian song. There’s so many elements in it that I have really honed into after the last couple of years.
Everyone always talks about what an incredible community of songwriters there is in Nashville. Do you think being there has really changed your songwriting?
Oh my gosh, absolutely, being in Nashville has taught me how to songwrite honestly, I had dabbled in it a little bit when I was fifteen or sixteen. I didn’t know what I wanted to write but I just tried to write something, I was terrible, I was not one of those people like Taylor Swift who can walk in with a hit song. I like to be in a room with other people and bounce ideas off them and create together that’s what works best for me, and just to be around so many talented people. They taught me how to formulate a song correctly and really got the ball rolling for me to be able to write a song.
‘Got Me’ was written with Cade, your husband. Do you find it easy to write with him because some people find it harder to write with people who know them so well and some people find it easier?
Yes it was very easy to write with him, we’re very complementary when it comes to music, I was influenced by rock actually a lot when I was younger – you can hear that throughout the album – and on American Idol, he played rock music. Musically, we connect really well, we complement each other really well, as well as writing the songs about the Lord and our faith because we are on the exact same page with that and he leads me really well, so it was great to be able to write with him.
I feel like you can’t write a song like that unless you’re on the same page about faith and about the world, so that’s really important. One of my favourite tracks on the record is ‘Footprints on the Moon,’ can you talk a bit about that track?
Yeah, ‘Footprints on the Moon’ was one I was really excited for people to hear. It’s probably in my top 3 on this album, I was so excited about it that I actually released it a week before the album came out, just as a teaser to the album. I like that song for a lot of different reasons, I think the title is very catchy because you’d kind of be like ‘what’s that song about.’ Jon Nite, one of the writers on that song, he came up with that title, which I loved. It’s such a big and powerful song, which will be really fun to perform live. It’s an encouraging song that I wish I had when I was just grinding it out and having a hard time in school, with girls or whatever and all the hard times that come around going toward a big dream. I wanted to create something and put it on this album for people that are going through the same thing as me.
We can’t not talk about ‘I Hope’… You released your collaboration with Charlie Puth in lockdown, how did he get involved in that song?
‘I Hope’ is more of your sensory thing but adding Charlie to it spread to a broader audience of having more of a pop flare to it, that was fun. He had heard it off a streaming platform and screenshotted it and put it on his Instagram story, he tagged me and put ‘wow’ or something… I was going through my DMs on Instagram and saw his verified check, I clicked on it and he had messaged me and said ‘oh my gosh, this song is amazing. I haven’t heard a song like this in years.’ I said ‘thank you so much, I really appreciate that.’ Then he messaged me back again and said ‘is there any way I can remix this song? I have to remix it.’ So, our teams got together, I’ve never met him in person but I got to speak to him on the phone because this was all happening during quarantine, so our teams got together and sent versions of the song back and forth.
Final Few
Which record would you take to a desert island?
Probably ‘Rumors’ by Fleetwood Mac.
You’ve got a song called ‘Rose Needs a Jack’ – was there enough space on that door?
Yes, there was definitely enough space for two people, she didn’t have to let him go but she did.
Complete the sentence…
Music is… important.
Country music is… storytelling.
Gabby Barrett is… a goof!
