Véél minder authentiek en edgy dan de jongedame die ik eerder aan bod liet komen, maar als Chris Stapleton (komt er ook aan met nieuw materiaal) eraan meewerkt, dan ga ik niet vlug twijfelen. Alana gaat veel meer richting catchy pop met wat country invloeden, blijft echter mooi overeind, zowel qua song als vocaal. Op haar tweede van drie Twenty Something EP's mag je hetzelfde geluid verwachten. Een aanrader voor wie houdt van goede countrypop met veel gitaarwerk.
Twenty Something: Figuring It Out is op 14 juli 2023 verschenen via Columbia Records.
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July 14 marks the much-awaited release of Twenty Something: Figuring It Out – the daringly honest second installment of Alana Springsteen’s forthcoming three-part debut album, Twenty Something. To celebrate the arrival of Figuring It Out, the Columbia Records NY/Sony Music Nashville artist-songwriter is delivering the project’s most left-of-center and darkly hypnotic track: her brand-new collaboration “ghost in my guitar,” featuring Country superstar Chris Stapleton.
“One of the highlights of Figuring It Out is my collaboration with Chris Stapleton. This song is intentionally not a traditional vocal duet. I wanted it to be a duet between me and a lead guitar, so the guitar feature was crucial to this song. It represents the lingering presence of something (in my case, someone) who’s gone but also very much not. Every time I think I’ve written my way past the hurt, I’m reminded that I have a long way to go,” shares Springsteen. “The guitar had to be just as emotionally charged as a vocal would have been to hint at those lingering feelings and memories that just won’t let me be, and Chris’ signature guitar tone was the only one I ever heard on it in my head. I’m so grateful to him for liking this song enough to lend his insane talent to it. I’m honored to have him on this project.”
“The best of her material moving past an era defined by a breakup converging with her growth in self-awareness is the Stapleton duet ‘ghost in my guitar,’” praises The Tennessean [read the feature]. Co-written by Springsteen, Ido Zmishlany (Shawn Mendes, Jonas Brothers), Delacey (Halsey, Dove Cameron), and Sarah Solovay (Bebe Rexha, Nessa Barrett), the release offers up a haunting portrait of the way repressed emotions can mess with our minds and even interfere with the pure catharsis of creativity. In a shining example of her strength as a vocalist, Springsteen channels pain, heartache, and raw frustration, as she speaks to her inability to stop writing songs on her guitar about a particularly devastating breakup: “Yeah I wanna smash it like a rockstar in a hotel room / Before I tell it all the things that I can’t tell you.” After opening on a stark arrangement of gritty guitar tones, the slow-burning track co-produced by Zmishlany and Springsteen builds a powerful momentum with its propulsive hand percussion and potent 808s, then reaches its peak with a sparse but smoldering guitar solo from Stapleton. Directed by David Bradley and Springsteen, the adjoining music video perfectly echoes the tone of moody isolation, focusing in on Springsteen as she delivers an aching performance in an empty house awash in ethereal light.
