 I find the topic of mental health very, very relevant to the work that I'm doing currently. As early as I can remember when I would listen to great songwriting, I would feel an impulse to go right. I would feel that music was conversational even before I understood what that meant. On my way to Central Park for a little fan meetup, hang, play some people the new album, sing a couple songs acoustic. Should be fun. Growing up in a progressive household, the ideas of being queer or being somehow different, wanting to take a different career path or make different life choices than what was normal was always welcomed and celebrated. It just felt like the forces of evil, so to speak, were fighting dirty and yet there was no soundtrack for a progressive movement that felt angry or urgent. Whether I'm using this opportunity to connect with musicians and creators or whether I'm talking to my own fans personally, I think the message is the same that above all else like being yourself and accepting your work and your life as a work in progress has been a big theme in my life and in my work right now because more and more we are seeing everyone else's highlight reel and everyone else's finished product. My goals as an advocate is to continue to amplify voices and be a positive role model for people that are looking to use their platform in some way shape or form and inspire others and motivate others. My music has evolved in that it's that there's a certain sense of maturity as I've grown up. I think I was always taking on challenging topics in my songwriting and I think with this new project it's more personal than ever and I'm taking these topics and I'm kind of relating them back to my personal life my family upbringing in a way that fans can get to know me a bit better and get to know where I came from kind of like removing some of the mystery from what it was that inspired me to make those early songs that people connected with. I'm really really excited about the album I have coming out and now I get to play it. It's a lot of the same themes that I feel like I've been in my music for a long time but this time I'm taking a little bit more of a personal approach to telling these stories about mental health and activism. I want to start with the title track if that's okay it's called I Love You I'm Trying. Did you guys bring headphones? You guys put that? I choose to focus on challenging topics in my music because I'm searching for a sense of purpose and fulfillment from being a songwriter and being a musician and I feel like when I was running on my own ego or my own insecurity or desire to be accepted those are motivating tools that can end up feeling quite shallow like needing people's approval or wanting to prove people wrong about myself was definitely an early inspiration for me to work hard but the further I got in my career I started needing a new solution for how am I going to get motivated to get up and put in this work. This last one is like a difficult one for me because it's quite quite like uh it sucks I guess it's like it was about a thing that sucks. I wrote a song on my new album called Heather which speaks about a fan that I lost to suicide and above all else I like concluding with this one for today because it is a reflection of my gratitude and my appreciation for the relationship that we have. Having dealt with mental health struggles of my own suicidal ideation topics that are pretty hard to talk about I've been fortunate enough to have access to resources like talk therapy um that have really helped me and and my mental health journey it's been a really important topic for me for um young people especially to have constructive outlets to express themselves and to make sense of the change going on in our lives without resorting to having to just numb it away because so often we see examples of that impulse gone wrong and I've lost so many artists that I looked up to and people in my life too looking for a way out so that's a particularly important topic to me right now. Beautiful. Yeah, I love this song that makes me cry. Oh good. At first time I sing that song and I'm like oh it's gonna be so bad. Yeah it's gonna be big, big ugly. See you in Dublin. We can hug it out. Yeah real quick. This is adorable. I hope you have an awesome birthday. Take care of yourself. Can we get a picture? Absolutely, let's get it. Ready for it? All right. Boom. My music is changing but I'm changing and so in that sense fans when they first met me I hope that fans can feel a sense of authenticity and and relatability from what I talk about and how I go about this career of mine and I'm gonna keep doing that even if it looks different from day to day. Fostering connection with fans is why I do this so why it's important to me is it gives me a reason to keep making music but for anyone out there I think that even when starting locally or just getting your foot in the door on the internet ultimately the platforms themselves that we rely on to get our music out there will change. I've personally been signed to record labels, dropped from record labels. I've worked with the biggest artists in the world and the one constant thing is if you can build that authenticity and a really strong relationship with your fans then that will be forever.