I Am Rachel Platten is not just the name of the artist’s new album; it is her declaration of freedom, her proclamation of maturation, her edict of growth, the bullhorn to the world that she is back stronger, secure, and solid. Yes, the album title says all of that. As she did, sitting in her San Fernando Valley backyard studio for a long talk about songwriting and all the life changes since her last album, Waves, released in 2017, and again on a follow-up phone call.
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[RELATED: Rachel Platten Emerges Through Darkest Times with “Mercy”]
“It’s really who I am, my introduction to the world for the first time,” she announces. “It’s completely me, completely integrated and whole. It’s like the song ‘Set Me Free,’” she says, referring to the song on the album in which she says she’s done “people pleasing” and doesn’t care “what you want me to be.”
She’s a Phoenix who has risen from the ashes in self-revelation, and I Am Rachel Platten tells the tale.
On Mother’s Day, 2023, “Girls,” the song Platten wrote about the greatest transformation her world experienced, was released. Her recent public appearances have taken that song to No. 9 at AC radio.
“I knew putting out a song to my girls on Mother’s Day was something I couldn’t be criticized for,” she teases.
While the joyous addition of her two baby girls, Violet Skye in 2019 and Sophie Jo in 2021, is celebrated in “Girls,” both births brought with them profound bouts of postpartum depression. The first one she felt was triggered by the big tour she went on when Violet was three months old. She thought it was just too much for a new mother.
“The second took me by surprise because I was not going on tour; it was during the Pandemic. I was going to stay very sheltered and keep my world very small, but I think that might have been more detrimental because I was really losing a sense of self and forgot who I was in the world,” Platten confides. “So, it lasted quite a bit longer, about a year and a half.”
While it was incredibly difficult, Platten says she wouldn’t take it back for anything. “I would go through it again and again to reach where I am right now. I am so grateful for the woman I have become. I have been able to integrate all of me, and I am grateful for where my music has gone because of it. I love this woman I am today. I am grateful for this journey of the dark side of the soul I went on because I’ve reached this truth, light, integrity, and integration of the dark and light. Also, I have such a strong relationship with God, which got me through. When you reach the point where you are crying mercy on your knees, and you have to surrender, what do you turn to in that moment when there’s nothing else? For me, I finally had to reconcile what is my relationship with God. Does God love me? Is God there? I found that, yes, God has always loved me, and I am so safe and okay and not alone in this world. That was always my fear—that I was alone. I know now that I am deeply loved just for me and that I don’t have to impress anyone; I don’t have to be famous or successful or perfect or beautiful to be loved by God; that I am enough.”
The song “Mercy,” released after “Girls” in January 2024, and then “Bad Thoughts” three months later, both define that dark period in Platten’s odyssey.
While some of the songs on the album seem as though they are written to or about someone else, most are actually written to Platten’s inner self, her inner child, to protect her, nurture her, and express herself. One is “Caroline,” a soulful song sung with guest artist Michael Bolton. “Caroline is a name that just came to me, but after I started singing it, my producer Jason (Evigan) said, ‘Let’s look up the name to see what it means,’ and we did. It means strength, and we realized I was singing to my inner fire, my inner strength: please don’t go, I need you, don’t go / if you stay with me, I will be okay in this world.”
Songwriting really became a means of expression for Platten at 19 while interning at a record label on a college trip abroad to Trinidad. As a political science international relations major, she had visions of uniting the world. “I was writing about things I really had no business writing about but felt deeply in my 19-year-old soul. They were really heavy songs. They were not your average teenage songs. I was feeling very alone, isolated, and confused about what it was like to experience racism the other way and the compassion in my heart the way my heart understood for the first time how the world works and how unfair it was. I was studying to be a diplomat.”
But creativity changed the course of her direction, and about twenty years ago, she began paying her music dues in New York.
“Not many people know this part of my story because ‘Fight Song’ came out, and it was like, ‘Where did she come from?’ But 15 years before that I was touring with a band, I was writing songs daily, I was building a fan base, one by one, I was in clubs from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. because those were the only slots I could get,” she reveals.
When a manager finally convinced her that endless touring and selling CDs from the back of her car were not going to get her where she wanted to go, Platten moved to L.A. and learned how to write a pop song, which she describes as “five writing sessions a week with random people every day, figuring out the craft and really treating it like a craft and hard work. Once you do that, you’ll have the structure, guidelines, and understanding of how a pop song works, so when inspiration strikes and when it’s the real emotion, you’ll have the skills to get it out.”
And that’s how “Fight Song” happened. Platten was struggling to be heard, needing the respect of her peers, but mostly her self-respect. “I was imploring myself to keep going. I was close to giving up,” Platten says of the worldwide hit that took her over two years to write.
But while the writing of some songs is laborious, others simply pour out. Most writers, including Platten, follow a couple of different processes: the discipline of a scheduled time each day to sit down and write, waiting for inspiration, and placing notepads everywhere, even beside the bed, in case a dream sparks an idea.
While Platten enlists both methods, she notes she has most success with the latter. “I try to be as disciplined as I can. I’ve learned over a long time as a songwriter that I can’t rely only on inspiration to hit. I had to actually learn to write a song a day in order to hone the craft, but during this off-cycle, it wasn’t like anyone was counting on me to put an album out. I didn’t need to follow some structure or some manager telling me how to do it or when to do it, so over the past three years, I was able to let it come whenever it came. But I only had the privilege to do that after having the work ethic of five sessions a week for years and learning the real L.A. school or Nashville school of writing songs.”
Platten says the songs do come in dreams, and when she’s in the bath; mostly when she’s not in left brain mode.
“Often when I’m not the analytic perfectionist, when I’m just playing, running, walking or looking at flowers,” Platten explains. “It’s rare that it happens when I’m working in a set time that some of my favorite songs will come.”
For I Am Rachel Platten, Platten chose to take her time releasing the record.
“It feels so sacred and so special to me that I was not in a rush. I took the temperature of where I was at, where my fan base was at, where my community was at, and where the world in general was at, to make the decision as to when was the right time to put it out.”
[RELATED: Rachel Platten Shares Stunning Motherly Wisdom on New Single “Girls”]
She decided to slowly unfold it, piece by piece, telling the story of her pilgrimage. Platten has guided her message, which has been extremely open on social media, giving her followers a stark view of how she arrived here. As exposed as Platten’s lyrics are, she is just that accessible and authentic with her followers and in performance.
“I’ve always been very comfortable being vulnerable and sharing how I feel. I’m not sure where it comes from. My mom is a therapist, and my dad is a psychologist. We talk about feelings in my family, so it must come from that in some way. But my sister is not that way at all. I just don’t know how to be any other way. I don’t like having any artifice. I’m allergic to inauthenticity. I hate pretending. Especially going through the journey I did, with my mental health and the dark side of the soul,” she declares. “I don’t have any time for bullshit.”
Photos by Jess Lynn Hess
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