by kendall nicole yakshe
photo by sam street
“I feel like my music guides me towards people who I need to know exist,” says 28-year-old Olivia Barton, transparent and sterling singer/songwriter pioneer. Standing as a pillar and brave spokesperson for those trying to make sense of their darker experiences and traumas, Barton lays out her thoughts in the most melodically beautiful fashion possible, with effortless relatability waterfalling from her gentle guitar strums and velvet folk harmonies. Having opened for Lizzy McAlpine on her 2023 tour, Olivia Barton has garnered a truly special audience for her truly special art — and is working on a new album that is being eagerly awaited as she continuously grows and morphs her career into new corners of her timeless musicality.
You’ve shared on your social media that you are currently working on a new record! What can you say about it?
Olivia: “I’m so glad you started with this because it’s my favorite thing to talk about. I’m currently making an album in New York with a producer named Sam Skinner. He's the producer/engineer and guitarist for my favorite band of all time, Pinegrove. I started writing stubs of some of the songs on this album in the months following my last album, but I really wasn’t writing all that much after it came out. I was knee deep in marketing-land and just wasn’t feeling very creative, so it took me a while to get back into it, and then I wrote a handful of songs that were co-written. I’ve incorporated a lot more co-writing on this album than before and that has been really great. We began recording it in December and I’ve been going back up there for a long weekend once a month or so to keep chipping away at it. I believe as of today, I’m halfway through the last song to be written for the album — I wrote the first part of it yesterday after feeling like it was on the tip of my tongue for months.”
How do you navigate the pressure within modern media to follow trends of songwriting and not be pulled away from your own authenticity?
Olivia: “The truth for me is that when I am in that headspace, trying to write a ‘certain way,’ it just does not work. I’m in a constant state of frustration and rarely ever get a whole song out that I guess would qualify as ‘trendy.’ And even in writing these last few months for this album, I’ve gotten really bogged down in the mindset of trying to figure out the coolest thing to say or finding what you think people really want to hear — but my favorite songs I’ve ever written were all songs that I wrote because I needed to write it, without thinking if it would make sense to anyone else.”
On that note, how has your songwriting process been affected by the growth of your audience?
Olivia: “Well, the process I just described was not my process before I knew anyone else was listening. I didn’t overthink it until I felt like I had a reason to. I think that has probably changed more in my writing process than I’m even currently aware of, since I’m still in the middle of feeling that pressure for the first time. It’s not that I worry about what other people will think, but because I know that people are going to hear it, it takes me out of being inside the song and instead I’m looking at it from the outside. And I think that’s even a reflection of how we live as a whole. Because when in a social situation, are you actually speaking from your heart or are you saying what you think is the right thing to say in that moment?”
How do you have the courage to be honest in moments where it gets difficult?
Olivia: “I believe songwriting is an expression of how you think and feel, and my music would be entirely different if I wasn’t in therapy. Therapy has given me a language for what I experience in the world and a space to be emotionally aware — and then I use my songs to process that outside of that one hour of therapy. It’s not a songwriting tool, it’s an emotional skill. I do it as a human choice, not a creative one.”
Tell me about your experience in the live performing side of your career and how it differs from your recording process.
Olivia: “I love performing, and I tend to feel very disconnected from the world and from myself when I haven’t played a show in a long time. On one hand, playing live is challenging because it requires a kind of presence that is difficult to always maintain, and that can be scary for me because I have a lot of stage fright. But once I feel centered in my body and up on stage, it’s wonderful. I just love it so much. I genuinely can’t believe I’ve been able to tour, and I’m still fairly new to it. It comes with its challenges — it’s very expensive and eating and sleeping consistently is hard, but as of now, it’s all super worth it for now.”
When did you begin to really dig into your passion for writing, and who were the people that encouraged you along the way in your upbringing?
Olivia: “I taught myself guitar in eighth grade, and then started writing in freshman year of high school. I not only was privileged enough to go to a high school with a very high quality arts program, but I had a voice teacher in high school, who had previously been my choir director in middle school, and she was a phenomenal opera singer — and the first person to encourage me to write my own music. She passed away about eight years ago from cancer while I was in college. It’s wild to think back to those days because I really had no idea what I was doing — and she was the first person to say things like, ‘You don’t have to know what you’re playing on piano, you can just play.’ I really wish that she could see what I’m doing now — because I believe she knew it would happen for me even though I had no idea.”
What advice would you give young people trying to channel their experiences into art?
Olivia: “Can I re-gift advice? I don’t really remember who told me this or if I read it somewhere, but it was ‘create the thing that you think is so specific to you that you believe nobody will understand it — and that will be the thing that connects with people the most.’”