Caroline Marquard Breaks Down ‘The Prologue’ With Track-by-Track

In such short time, Caroline Marquard has steadily seen her stock rise. She has eclipsed a million views on YouTube—with original songs as well as covers—and even managed to hit the German market.

The Swiss-American singer and songwriter was born in Zurich, Switzerland, attended high school in New York, then dabbled at Berklee College of Music before deciding to make the big move to Music City. Caroline recently launched her live video series From Switzerland To East Nashville and announced her album release last month. One of her latest singles “Train of Thought” has earned over 150,000 streams on Spotify so far, another “Keep My Eyes on You” premiered on American Songwriter.

With the full length set to release on June 26, Marquard did a track-by-track breakdown for American Songwriter readers. If you like what she has to offer, pre-save her work!

Never Should’ve Left:
This was my first write with Liz Rose and I was freaking out to say the least. I am a big Taylor swift fan like every other girl my age, so this was a big moment. I brought in this idea and Liz loved it so we ran with it. Jordan was coming up with some cool music on the guitar and Liz was the lyrical genius we all know and love her to be. I think we wrote it in like an hour and a half tops. This song is about regretting leaving someone. Knowing you weren’t your best self in the relationship and realizing after the fact I was pushing them away to find someone else to love, when all you want is for them to love you.

Train of Thought:
I wrote this song with Tad Kubler in 2016. I was still living in NYC at the time and was experimenting with different directions for my music. This song idea came to me when I was actually driving to Brooklyn from NJ for the write. I passed a train station and started think about how funny trains are if you think about them..long rectangle metal boxes attached together holding important things on two little tracks. Then I realized I had been thinking about trains for like 5 minutes and thought to myself..wow that was a long train of thought..and the song was born! Tad is one of my favorite people I’ve ever written with because there’s this magical thing that happens sometimes between co-writers where it’s the perfect fit. When I write with him the words and melody just flow out and he is a musical genius. It’s just easy! We wrote this in 30 minutes. 

Keep My Eyes on You:
I wrote this song on my first writing trip to Nashville when I was 20 Years old. It’s one of the songs that made me realize I had to move and start a new life in Nashville. The inspiration behind this song is the spot a ballerina keeps her eyes on while she’s spinning. The calm in the storm, the love that keeps you grounded. 

Only One:
Only One actually came from a little lyric and melody idea that my co-writer and producer Jordan Lehning had been sitting on for 6 years. He said he had just never been able to finish it, but it popped back into his head while we were writing and we finished it in like an hour. We kinda all knew instantly that it was something special and unique and fit my voice so well! The song is about feeling paranoid that you’ve finally found true love, but something or someone is bound to mess it up. What’s really cool about how we recorded it is that it sounds paranoid too. So it turned out to be this hauntingly beautiful love song in a way.

Don’t Waste My Time:
This song came from a place of frustration. There’s nothing worse than someone living in there own world and not thinking about anyone else. This song is my way of saying I’m done with this kind of people, I can live without them just fine. Haha 

Not A Rolling Stone:
I was inspired to write “Not A Rolling Stone” when I needed self assurance. When I wrote the song I was in a transition period in my life and was getting lost in people’s opinions of what I should be doing with my career. The idea we started with was actually the reverse of what it is now! The original lyrics were “You’re my rock when I’m a Rolling Stone.” My co-writer Chris Seefried turned to me and said “Hey” why don’t we make this more about believing in yourself instead of giving that power to someone else. It instantly struck a chord with me and I knew that was the right direction. We ended up with an anthem about empowering yourself and I hope people can see themselves in my story. It’s okay to not have all the answers!