Today, Renee Blair has released her debut album – Seventeen. Here, we interview Renee Blair about the record, the meaning of ‘Seventeen’ and how the project came together.
How are you?
I’m very well, thanks.
You’ve had a crazy few months and now finally you’re in release week – how are you processing all the emotions and how has it been finally being able to go back on the road again?
Yeah, the last year was definitely a little disheartening for sure, but it feels good. The world is slowly but surely on the right track, so fingers crossed for that.
Seventeen is such a fabulous project, which has been so many years in the works. How does it finally feel to be able to release it into the world?
It’s interesting, I feel like all the groundwork was really laid over the last decade for this. If you’re familiar with the Enneagram scale at all, I’m a three, which is an achiever, so I’m already like, ‘what’s next?’ I’m happy that it’s out there getting a complete package of a project to the fans. I write so many songs a week, so I’m always looking for the next bigger and better thing down the corner.
It’s such an achievement to release an album as a cohesive project. What does it mean to share that with fans and what did you want them to take away from the whole project?
You know, I moved to Nashville when I was 17, which is part of the name of the album. Seventeen has had a lot of consistencies in my life. I have been in some near fatal accidents early in my 20s and one of them happened on September 17 of 2011, so then 10 years after that, September 17, was also the day that I got engaged. 17 is my lucky number, there’s 17 tracks on the album. So anyway, that being said, I moved to Nashville as a teenager, I was the naive girl that thought I’d have a Grammy by the time I was 28. I genuinely believed it with all my heart, so over a decade later, to finally be putting out my first album, I think this particular album is really representative of my growing up in Nashville – not like growing up as a child, but my growing into the woman I’m supposed to be – I was that single girl in her 20s that fell for all of the wrong men. It came with a lot of heartbreak, a lot of possibility. I think that this album is really geared towards my younger self, the college age when I was just confused about life in general, I wanted to be a woman so bad, but I still felt like a kid. This album just really represents my journey of becoming a strong woman. It took a long time to get there, but I feel like there’s a few songs that are really vulnerable and honest about the stumbles I endured along the way.
I was going to say, though there are a lot of fun songs on the record, you also have a lot of vulnerable moments too, like with ‘You Did.’ I love that song so much.
So, my fiance, he was gone for a month last year working on an album, it was the longest we’d ever gone without seeing each other. I had always struggled with finding a good guy, I picked all the rotten apples off the tree. You have to pick some bad apples or kiss the bad frogs, so to say. Once you have a string of men that just don’t treat you well, you start to believe that that’s what you’re gonna get in life and it’s really sad. There were some guys that I felt like I gave them my love and my heart and why wouldn’t they treat me good if I was just trying to love them? Who doesn’t want love? Finding some guys along the way that made me feel like I was unworthy of love and then finally finding someone that gave me a chance to properly love them, it was really special. I think that’s what I’ve been longing for forever, much like we all are as humans. I know I’m not alone. A lot of people have given up on love, but there will always I believe be that one person out there that will kind of show you why it didn’t work out with anyone else.
Talking about those bigger songs, I feel like there’s so many influences in your music and I heard so many 90s sounds, from 90s RnB to 90s country. Did that era really influence your music?
Yes, absolutely. It’s interesting, my first record deal I was signed by La Reed who signed TLC and Usher, worked with Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Pink, Avril Lavigne and OutKast, I was like ‘what do you want to do with me?’ It was so interesting, because that era of music was such a condensed period of time where all the music across all genres was so, so, so strong – P!nk and Avril Lavigne’s first album put up next to OutKast and TLC. All those records still stand the test of time, they’re incredible, so I feel like, as I was young and falling in love with music, I was lucky enough to fall in love with music during a really beautiful phase of music. I grew up in St. Louis – it’s a huge part of my story, also, when I was in middle school, Nelly – who’s from St. Louis – was one of the biggest artists on the planet with Country Grammar. I think Nelly gave me a huge belief that someone from St. Louis could take over the world. I attribute a lot of my courage to Nelly.
It’s always good to have those trailblazers, people to make you see what is possible.
I would say, when I was able to have my very first CD player in my bedroom at home, I always knew I wanted to have the best voice or be the best singer. I didn’t even know songwriting was a thing. I just didn’t even think about it. I was so young. Some of my earliest inspirations were Mariah Carey or Destiny’s Child was way up there too. Those are the people that I think really taught me how to sing, or I would emulate and try and hit every note that they were hitting, that was really the era of music that shaped me.
You’ve been in Nashville for over a decade now, how do you think that it’s shaped you as an artist?
Gosh, sadly, it’s been 14 years, which I can’t believe, I cannot believe that it’s been that long. I think Nashville is first and foremost a town that really prides itself on the craft of songwriting. I wasn’t aware of that when I first moved here. So, I think there was a part of me that always knew I wanted to be an artist, but I knew that the town would take me seriously if I could write. I really buckled down and tried to spend years and years studying the greatest songwriters and how they would put words together, why they wouldn’t put certain words next to each other. I think what Nashville really did best for me was cherish and take the craft of songwriting very seriously, that’s one thing that I don’t know if I would have gotten necessarily in LA or New York, Atlanta, any of the other places. I love Nashville for that more than anything.
I mean, it’s interesting. I always associate Nashville with songwriting rather than country music. I think the core for Nashville is always gonna be songwriting.
Yeah, I don’t say this in a bad way, by any means, but I think they’re snobby about their songwriting as they should be. It’s the thing that we all need in the world is something to relate to when we’re really happy or when we’re at our weakest moments. I think the true talent or beauty in songwriting is finding a way to make it honest to yourself, but relate to anyone who’s listening. It’s tough, I know there’s some songs that you hear that can only relate to this specific artist, but then there’s some songs that it’s like, wow, this relates to literally everyone I know. I mean, everyone has a family, everyone has jobs and heartbreak and love and I’ve always really tried to make my music relatable. I think the motto for my life, for my career, is I always try to think as a fan first, on my worst days, on my weakest moments, what did I want to hear come across my speakers? I try to really keep that in mind. There’s going to be someone out there that’s having a really shit day and they need a song to either turn their day around or just make them feel like they’re not alone. I think if you can approach the music, or at least when you compile songs for an album, from somewhat of a selfless perspective, it’s not about me and what I want to say, it’s about the people listening and what they need to hear.
I can imagine you’re writing all the time, so how did you go about selecting songs for this record?
I really started touring very heavily in 2018. I was touring so much right before the pandemic, but it’s interesting because I only put like one or two songs out when I started touring. I had all this material that no one had ever heard. the fans didn’t know who I was, I was opening for Billy Currington or Walker Hayes and the fans literally had never heard my name, they didn’t know anything about me. I kind of used that challenge as a tool to play songs for them, as a guinea pig, and try out new songs on the road. I watch the fans and I saw what songs made them want to party, what songs made them want to cry, what songs made them want to slow dance with their partner. I actually feel like I listened to the consumer and let them kind of help pick the songs without even realising it.
It must have been frustrating then when the pandemic happened, and you’re back to playing to no-one or a screen?
Well, it’s interesting, my live show, I would like to think of it as like a true party. When people go out on a Friday night, they just want to rage. They’re not at work, they’re not at home, they want to have a good time, get rid of the frustration of the day. The music that I had recorded with a full band live in the studio, I was ready to release early 2020, I was really, really sad and bummed out because my next chapter of music was all the party songs, but no one could go out and party. I held on to those records like ‘Downtown’ specifically came out today and ‘Turn Up the Night’ was the most recent release before that, I held on to those songs for a year and a half, because I just didn’t feel like I would be giving those songs the justice that they deserved if I put them out while everyone was stuck at home.
Well now we are able to thank goodness, so we’re so glad to enjoy these songs now. Thank you so much for your time today Renee!
