A Conversation with Kate Stephenson
For her new single “Exless,” Kate Stephenson wasn’t entirely sure if she was going to make a post about the song. After consulting her sister and a few close friends, she posted a video premiering the song and it went viral with over four million views on TikTok. Between fielding calls from labels and potential managers, Kate was able to sit down with me via zoom for an interview to talk about her music, TikTok’s influence and how she writes.
After being introduced to Kate Stephenson’s music, I knew I had to talk to her. She is one of those artists with exceptional songwriting abilities, but she is also able to market and essentially manage herself to gain traction for her music. Her soothing collection songs are filled to the brim with ambience and ladened with soft guitar notes. Every song feels incredibly personal, as if we were reading Kate’s journal. Songs such as “Future Dropout” and “Dearest Midwest” describe her relationship with college life and her adjustment to moving to a completely new place so far from home. Others, like her newest release “Exless” fill a void that Kate said was lacking. And she was right, there are no songs that normalize not dating. Kate executes the song in such a beautiful way, lamenting on the exes she does not have, while retaining the emotional core of a breakup anthem. From the interview, I learned that her songwriting stems from a defining moment in her life where she and her sister realized that writing music was fun. All because of a missing Lego figure named Ricky.
Please enjoy my interview with Kate Stephenson
Nik: What kind of music were you around when you were growing up?
Kate: My parents were both classical musicians. When going to concerts, and in the house, it has always been classical and jazz music. My dad's also a huge Journey fan so those were the three, even though they don't mix together at all.
N: Would you say that those genres became the foundation for your modern music taste or as you got older, did you diverge from that?
K: I think it's a little bit of both. As I got older, I started to l listen to the radio and find new music that I really liked. But I think that my classical music foundation was really important in growing my music tastes as well as my style. As soon as I hear like a cello, I'm going to freak out and love the song. It’s a little bit of both, I learned from it and I also found ways that I apply it to the music I like and make.
N: Did your parents give you a push into music or were you around music so much that it became the path you wanted to take?
K: It was their idea to have all my siblings and I take lessons starting from a really young age with a bunch of different instruments. In that sense, it was a little bit of a push, but I loved it and still love it. And so, in doing that, my passion for making music grew, but I was never pushed to make any music.
N: Were there any particular artists that inspired you to make music or was it kind of a build up?
K: It was just a built up. I started writing music when I was really young, and I don't even know what I listened to back then besides the “I'm a Barbie Girl” song. There was no inspiration from any artists, but as I grew older and started to listen to more music and develop an actual taste. That's when I started to pull ideas from other artists.
N: Can you tell me about the first song you made?
K: I think I was eight or nine, and when I first started writing my sister and I worked together. We had a bunch of little Legos and her favorite one was named Ricky, and one day she couldn't find Ricky anywhere. We were in our basement and we were looking for him and then we wrote a little song, and I still know how it goes. That was the first one we ever made, and we realized it was really fun. We were literally just two kids in a basement, looking for a Lego piece, and we were like, “what if we make a little jingle?” And I started singing it when we look for it to pass the time. That was our first song.
N: Would say you're more of a more of a collaborative producer or do you like to self-produce everything?
K: Everything up until this upcoming single has been entirely me on production and writing besides collaborations with my sister and one collaboration with Jordan Lebowitz. It's always been just me, but for this upcoming single I produced it myself and then I posted a TikTok, which went viral. I sat with it and I realized I couldn't get it to sound the way I wanted to, so I found a producer. So that was a totally new process.
N: What has been the effect of TikTok on you and your music?
K: It has helped me exponentially. I stayed away from TikTok for a while because I was like “I don't need to, I'm not gonna be on TikTok” but then eventually I made it, and I it took me a long time to start posting music. The first song that I promoted was “Ramen Noodle” which was from my album Growing up in Reverse. It went viral, and at the time it had like 60,000 views or something and then the streams just skyrocketed. And I saw how much TikTok directly affected my streams because I've been releasing music for several years and just had my family and friends listen to it, even though it was on Spotify. Then seeing the effect of TikTok I was like “I gotta keep doing this” and so I've been posting my music on TikTok for a little under a year now. It has been the sole contributor to on my streams apart from Discover Weekly. Without TikTok, I would not have a fan base right now.
N: Could you tell me about college and how that affected your music?
K: In my first year of college, I released music that I recorded just in my dorm room. I came out with “Hurry” first in November of my first year. College influenced my music actually a lot now that I think about it. I visited a friend from home that went to school in San Diego, and we were talking about how much our lives have changed and asking each other “oh, what if we had done this before we like left home and before our lives totally turned around” and then I was on the train back to Orange and I wrote “Hurry.” And then “Dearest Midwest” is an ode to missing home. For “Wednesday Morning” I wrote about the Wednesday that I found out I had to go home because of Covid. “California” is written about the tension between being from Illinois and being in California and it's also a little love song. Then “Future Dropout” happens. College has been a huge influence on my music because I write about me and my circumstances, and those were my circumstances.
N: You touched on the relationship you have with Illinois and California, what was that transition like moving from the Midwest to California?
K: It was definitely a huge change for me. I'd been in Illinois for so long, and going to California one, there are mountains there, not in Illinois. But I always knew that I wanted to go far for college, but I didn't know what that meant. And I think when I got there, I was a little more overwhelmed than I thought I would be. Up until the week before I left, I was like, “I'm going to go to California, I'm moving out, I'm going to college, I'm my own human being, this is exciting.” I got there and I realized I was so far from home, and my roommate lived an hour away she could go home whenever she wanted. I definitely got hit with a lot of homesickness. “Dearest Midwest” kind of covers that. I obviously missed my family and my friends, but it was more I just missed being in a place that was safe and comfortable for so long. I know how to get around everywhere in Illinois, and in California I didn't even have a car. I was not sure how I was going to adjust if I can't figure out how to get around, so I went on really long walks all over.
N: Could you tell me about making “Future Dropout” and what it was like following through with dropping out of college?
K: It’s really fun for me to listen back to now because the ending is “I’m probably not gonna do it” but I ended up going through with it. I was failing in every class that I was in and I didn't want to do my work. I just wanted to exist, and I didn't want to do film anymore. I still love film, but I didn't want to do it for the rest of my life. I was even in some music classes, but I was like “I want to be making it right now.” I do want to learn it and I have learned a lot about music. I felt like I was being held back by something that is supposed to be saved for a time when you want to grow and learn it. One day I went to the beach with my roommates to work on my cinematography project. They were like, “have you considered taking a gap year or dropping out?” and I was like, “that's an option?” I went to our apartment and I called my parents and cried. They were like, “you're not doing it, you're staying in school.” And then I sat down at my computer and I finished “Future Dropout” in one sitting because I had so much frustration. I was just so overwhelmed that the song happened so naturally. That night was in November. I came home for Thanksgiving break and I stayed home. I didn't go back, and I'm still here in Illinois. I officially got my parents to agree to let me at least take time off with the promise that maybe if music doesn't work out, I go back. And that happened in January, so it was a few months after that song came out and after I wrote it, that it officially happened.
N: What has it been like kind of navigating the music industry now?
K: mean it's fun, this week specifically has been huge. I haven’t had to navigate the music industry until this week because I'm independent. I don't have manager; I don't have anything. I was just making music and putting it out and making TikToks to promote, and then people were listening. I posted a TikTok few days ago and I've never had a video do that well, it has 4.6 million views. I sent that that video to like my sister and friend before posting and I was like, “should I post this? and they were like, “I guess” and then here we are. It's promoting my upcoming single, and because it did so well that I have people reaching out to me, and I'm having conversations. I've learned more in this week than I've learned in all the years of releasing music because now I'm starting to understand things like splits, management, what labels do, what managers do and what agents do. I am starting to get more of a hang of things for when it's time to make those decisions.
N: What’s your approach to songwriting?
K: Every day I write a song because it's a muscle you have to exercise it. Sometimes it's bad, sometimes I really like it. What I do is I keep everything in my notes app. It has a ton of random lyric ideas that pop into my head on a daily basis, or if someone says something, or if I see something, or if I just think something, I write it down. I have a ton of just one line or two-line notes. And the reason I do that is because my process recently has been that I produce a demo while I write, which just helps me get it done faster. I feel more proud of it when it's done because I like to listen to it in the car and all that. I’ll come up with a progression then go into my notes app and record myself basically improvising.
Kate paused to open up her notes app and read out some of the things she had written down that could potentially serve as the basis for a song.
K: Albuterol god, flight attendant, cheat sheet, want to cry over a scraped knee again, the boy from October, a song about being tailed while you're driving and someone's speeding behind you.
Yeah, the notes app just helps me that work faster.
N: Are you still in a musical evolution or have you found the kind of music that you want to be making?
K: I think I found it. My last album, Growing up in Reverse from this past summer, the concept of it was the songs were ordered newest to the oldest that I've written. It also is an evolution of my sound. It sounds very much like musical theater at the very end of it. But the first song, “Growing up in Reverse” and other top tracks of the album, are more of what I thought was my new sound. And this new album I'm working on, the best I can compare it to is like Bruno Major, it's just strings, guitar or piano and harmonies. I really like what I'm doing right now and there's obviously always room to change. Maybe one day I'll be like, “never mind I'm a screamo artist.” But I really do think that I've found my sound.
N: What has performing been like for you?
K: I haven't performed very much, I used to do small gigs with my sister in high school, but I haven't gotten the chance to because my music started to grow in August. I do sing at church every week, which makes me feel like I'm practicing a type of performance, and I really love it. In the future I'm definitely hoping to tour and do shows. It’s a two-sided passion, I like to dance like an idiot in front of people and sing my own music and that brings me life. But then there's also the making of the music which also brings me life. I really do hope to perform more.
N: I’m really anxious to hear about your new single since you mentioned it went viral on TikTok. What information can you share about it?
K: It's called “Exless” and it's a breakup song about not dating. This is the breakup song for people who haven't dated to relate finally, and cry along and sing along to. When it blew up on TikTok I realized more people related than I thought would. I guess I'm normalizing not dating in your 20s, which feels pretty good because that should be normalized. I wrote it back in February, and I just sat down posted the video impulsively and people liked it, which led me into a panic of “how do I do this?” I was really nervous that it wasn't going to do well because I told everyone in February that on March 7th it’d be out and then it wasn't.
I wrote it after being sad about a boy I didn't date, and breakup songs didn't do it for me. I just got inspired to write the song I wanted to hear and now it's coming out which is so crazy because was so scared that it never would. It's definitely pop, and I like to write pop songs, sometimes I write folk pop, but this song is pure pop, and I'm really excited about it.
I asked Kate Stephenson if she could share one piece of advice whether it be about music or life in general.
Kate: I guess this applies to music and life. It's my mantra that I'm going to get tattooed as soon as my parents are no longer financially responsible for me.
”there will come a time”
That's what I always say to myself at least twice a day. Whenever I get bummed out about something, if I notice that I've lost some followers, I know it doesn't matter. There will always come a time when things seem bad and there will always come a time when you're on top of the world. That's just something I always tell myself and that I like to tell people whenever they're going through something. If someone’s like “I can't believe I have this essay, I'm never gonna get it done!” I tell them there will come a time when that essay is done.
No matter what, you're going to get there, so don't stress about it.