Today, Emily Hackett released her second single and title track from the upcoming EP, ‘My Version of a Love Song,’ set for release this summer. Born in Ohio, raised in Atlanta, this Nashville-based singer-songwriter shares her introverted attempt at a love song, challenging herself to put her feelings on paper.
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“My husband is also a songwriter, and we come home sometimes and share each other’s songs that we’ve done that day,” Hackett shared. “I hold some of the ones that I write I keep to my chest, but I wrote one, and I wanted to share it with him that day. He was like yeah, yeah, that’s cool, but you never really write songs about me.”
The next week Hackett told her producer that story – he knows both of them well. Hackett remembers him laughing in response, then saying, “It’s time.” This was a challenge for Hackett in terms of her expression of emotion or love language. “I kind of get hives giving compliments and words of affirmation – it’s not my thing. As a songwriter, people expect us to be really good at that type of thing. The idea of writing a mushy-gushy love song made me roll my eyes a bit.”
No stranger to a challenge, Hackett mastered her own soulful version of a love song for her husband, creating a title for her new EP. The track addresses her husband and audience with raw, honest words. In place of “mushy-gushy” adjectives, Hackett affirms her husband by expressing that ‘this is who I am, and this song is me trying my best to show you how much I love you.’ “My Version of a Love Song” departs slightly from the twangier “Easy,” and sonically aligns more with her first single from this upcoming EP, “Hangovers and Heartbreak.”
Her style is influenced by her father, who held equal reverence for folk music and 90’s rock radio growing up. His taste, combined with her own 90’s baby love for Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton, Sheryl Crow, has formed a genre-less world where Hackett does not feel pigeonholed.
“I took in a little bit of everything and really ate up music from a very young age and so…it made me kind of malleable,” explained Hackett. “Nashville really taught me to craft the lyrics, which was always really important to me. I don’t necessarily have an artist in my life that shaped me, and I love everything they do.”
Hackett strikes a balance between a vintage Zeppelin vinyl and a New Music Friday playlist. She explained that she is first drawn to a song and the song-writing before a specific category or sound. For Hackett, the writing process is one of self-discovery. She finds peak creative energy when she is alone and is motivated by the challenge of walking into the room and not really knowing what she might have to say that day.
“Somebody told me once, “Hackett shared, “a lot of artists come to Nashville as crystals, and the tricky thing about that is that they want people they work with all the best people. The trick is to maintain the edges of that crystal and not become overpolished, not to be worn down to a skipping stone. You want to remain that unique crystal with that unique edge.”
The breakout singer-songwriter hopes that while sharing a different sound than her previous releases, she will continue to pull in new people.
“I have connected greatly with the country music fans, but I am also excited to connect with other types of people that may not have to know that they like what I do. The thing that is so cool with where we are in music is that artists are becoming less categorized and it opens doors to speak to more people. That’s what is important to me as an artist.”
Listen to Emily Hackett’s title track, “My Version of a Love Song,” below. Keep an eye out for her EP, an eclectic compilation of love notes, this summer.
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