Caity Krone is one of the artists who reached out to us via Instagram earlier in the year when she was releasing her single ‘Thank You For The Sunday Paper’. From the first few chords emotions took over. Caity Krone brings deeply personal storytelling and brave lyrics and takes you on a journey. It’s an invitation we couldn’t refuse.
2020 was a busy year for Caity and she just released a debut EP ‘Work Of Art’. And I got to admit that her latest single of the same title completely rocked our world. It managed to reached the top spot on our weekly chart Indie Top 39. We are thrilled to have an opportunity to share a very honest conversations with one and only Caity Krone. Trust me you want to read this!
Ok, here we go!
Congratulations on releasing your debut EP! It’s been 3 years since your debut single ‘Record About You’. Can you tell us about the journey you had?
Thank you so much! ‘Record About you’ was the first song where I stopped and thought, “Okay, this feels like my first step as an artist. This feels like my story”. I wrote ‘Sunday Paper’ shortly after, and then spent the next year and a half writing as much as I could, finding my voice within the cracks of trying to write like my heroes and write the songs that I thought were good. The moments where I stopped asking myself “would this person write this lyric? Will people think this is sophisticated music?” were the moments I wrote the songs that ended up on the EP.
I got to admit that all 3 singles you released in 2020 sound so good and so different. If someone would play it randomly it would be hard to say that the same person sings it. What’s the secret? Does each of the songs represent a different character for you?
Thank you! That’s so interesting! I definitely was experimenting with different sounds and exploring songwriting, so it makes sense that the songs land in different places sonically. Each of the songs sort of have a different sentiment in regards to the same situation, like how you go through different phases and emotions when you’re saying goodbye to someone, realising maybe you never had them in the first place, and that maybe you lost yourself along the way too.
Can you tell us more about each of the singles you released this year? What do these songs mean to you? Feel free to share any stories about the process of bringing these songs to life.
Thank you for the Sunday Paper
I wrote ‘Sunday Paper’ shortly after ‘Record About You’. It was almost like I was talking to myself about what I needed to do, to move on, to put my muscle back into my music and my dreams rather than into resurrecting a past love, but not quite being able to do it yet. The song was meant to be like, “you can’t force things to go the way you want, you just have to accept the state of things, ‘take the news and go back in’ , you know?” The pre chorus is my favourite moment, because it says it all. I made their dreams my dream, I made them my dream, and left mine on the back-burner.
I’ve Been Lonely
‘I’ve Been Lonely’ was one of the first songs I wrote with Eian McNeely, who I wrote three songs that ended up on the EP with. We both immediately fell in love with the first demo of the song – it was warm and mystical and felt like exactly the way I felt when I listened to my favourite songs for the first time. My team at the time hated it, all of them, and it was the first time I really trusted my gut and fought for it to be on the EP. The original vocal is still on the recording.
Towards the end of the recording process, nearly two years after writing the song, I brought the demo to producer Will Van Boldrik. I told him the song was about sort of a fantasy of a relationship that I was holding out for. He added drums, guitar, that amazing banjo moment, and then he said, “this song needs a bridge, and in it, you need to admit that this is a fantasy, it’s not real”.
The whole process of writing this EP made me realize I needed to believe in myself and my music the way I believed in this person I was pining after.
CAITY KRONE
At the tail end of the process where we were, I felt like I was getting myself back again. So I sang, “I’ve been underwater since we met”, over those new chords he wrote (it’s the only time in the song that the same two chords aren’t repeating), and it was the most cathartic moment of making the EP.
Work Of Art
I wrote Work of Art with my friend Genessa Gariano (of The Regrettes) in an empty room at her mom’s music school in the valley. Sometimes you spend an hour on a song that isn’t very good just so the right song can spill out of you right after, and that’s what happened here. It’s the only song we’ve ever written together. I remember feeling like we were in a completely safe space to be ourselves without trying to write a song that sounded like this or that, because Genessa was so cool that I just wanted to be creative without trying to do something specific, and we just had fun while we wrote it. It leaned into the creepier parts of having a crush, the unabashed irritation of being ignored, the grade school pettiness of watching the object of your affection be rejected by the object of theirs. Driving home from the session I listened to the demo and thought the lyrics were a bit uncomfortable, I wasn’t sure if I could ever put it out. And I think that’s what made it the best one.
Sometimes you spend an hour on a song that isn’t very good just so the right song can spill out of you right after.
INDIE TOP 39
How many cakes were used in the ‘I’ve Been Lonely’ video? I got to admit those cherries looked so tempting 🙂
Okay, would you believe it, one! Just one! No stunt cakes.
‘Work Of Art’ ends with a line ‘I spent 4 months writing this record about you, I’m sorry’. Was that the core idea behind the EP? Did you have one specific person in mind?
Well, that lyric references the first song I ever released, ‘Record About you’ where the chorus says “I could write an entire record about you, baby. And I’d hate the way the words would come so easy.” And the EP is about that same person, an expansion of that song, I think. I did hate the way the words about them spilt out so easily, and the post-EP writing challenge was to write about current relationships, about my relationship to myself, about where I am now.
The EP was exploring all the different facets of a really deep infatuation with someone that never quite resulted in a relationship.
INDIE TOP 39
Does the person know the record is about them?
I don’t even think they’ve heard it!
Looks like 2020 has been super productive for you. After teasing us with 3 singles you managed to release your debut EP ‘Work Of Art’. How do you feel? Everything seems to be moving super fast for you.
I’m really grateful to everyone who’s listened to the EP. I think year has been so productive because when the pandemic hit and we were all on lockdown, I personally had no distractions from everything in my life that needed changing.
When the entire world is on fire, if I didn’t burn down something within myself to make space for something better, it would have been a missed opportunity.
CAITY KRONE
So I picked up guitar and chord theory, serendipitously found a new writing partner in one of my best friends, wrote the majority of a new record, switched my management team over, really took my physical and mental health seriously. Getting to that place as a better songwriter and a more present person, in general, was the step I needed to be ready to release Work of Art.
Putting it out was so cathartic, I’m so proud of the songs, and I didn’t feel as scared to put it out because now I know I have more to say as a writer. And I’m a small artist, so it’s easy to compare myself to bigger signed artists, but what I’m learning is that it’s all about baby steps, because the part where you’re growing is the most fun, so I’m just really grateful that people are listening and to be in a place where I’m writing new music I really love.
You recently shared a super cute photo of yourself as baby painting. Was art always part of your world when you were growing up?
I mean, my family always loved the arts and performing. Both my parents were in film and TV. My dad loves fine art and my mom loves music and Broadway. My sister is a musical theatre major at college. They always gave my sister and I the encouragement to have dreams of being performers.
Do you remember the moment you decided to become a singer-songwriter?
I can’t remember ever wanting to do anything else besides sing. I used to listen to my Hit Clip radio and imagine it was me on stage singing. When I first heard Taylor Swift’s Speak Now’ album I wanted to write songs, which was sort of my childhood gateway to Carole and Joni and Stevie. When I first heard Dreams and The Circle Game and So Far Away, I was like, I need to do that.
What do you want to achieve with your music?
I want to make someone else feel the way I felt when I heard those songs for the first time.
Do you have a song, that when you hear it, you’d say, “I wish I’d written that”?
‘Dreams’. It was the first time I heard a song and just lit up. It’s ethereal and vulnerable and perfect. Every time I hear it my stomach drops in the best way.
Who would you like to collaborate with?
Harry Styles, Adele, Phoebe Bridgers, Stevie Nicks (pipe dream), maybe Dua Lipa… I love her.
How would you summarise 2020?
A garbage fire? But actually, a time of reevaluating priorities, focusing on what really matters, improving and grounding yourself as best as you can.
What are your plans for 2021?
I’d love to release a full-length album, or at least start the process of recording it. Maybe a show at some point before the end of the year if it’s safe.
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