Faye Webster is just as reserved as her music. Obscurity is her language. In conversation, it’s even more apparent. She often takes long pauses in between answers and abruptly stops herself before giving more details.
During a Zoom call in February, she felt a bit overwhelmed, but excited. She’d just wrapped a string of shows in Australia and New Zealand. And her new album drops roughly a week after our conversation. “Underdressed at the Symphony,” released today, is a 10-track album inspired by her very random trips to see the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.
“I’m actually going tomorrow, so that’ll be nice,” she said.
Indeed, the sounds of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra are Webster’s newest source of creativity. It’s where she found solace after dealing with a breakup. She’d go alone and on a whim, mainly wearing jeans and t-shirts — literally being underdressed, as the album title states.
Photo courtesy of Secretly Canadian
Photo courtesy of Secretly Canadian
“It was something that was very therapeutic to me, especially being alone. I was really into orchestral and symphonic music. Atlanta has one of the best, and I felt like I should be going.”
Although the Atlanta artist has a penchant for understatement in conversations, the breadth of her musicality is delightfully the opposite. Since her debut in 2013, Webster has developed an enchanting sound that’s sometimes funny, sometimes folk, sometimes country, sometimes indie pop and sometimes R&B-influenced — mainly backed by the misty strings of the pedal steel guitar.
It’s a standard she developed when she began making music at 13.
“I think it was a lot of experimenting in my mind and trial and error of just making music because that’s all I knew how to do, or feel like I wanted to do,” the 26-year-old singer said. “It’s just about constantly being inspired, and doing it a lot.”
Her fifth studio album is a dreamy testament to that practice. She started working on “Underdressed at the Symphony” last year. Throughout the album, Webster invites listeners to the often anxious yet witty mind of a musician who enjoys seclusion and is still navigating fame.
Michelle Mercado
Michelle Mercado
Webster’s lush songwriting and expansive sound has yielded a growing fanbase (she has over 7 million monthly listeners on Spotify), but she grapples with her popularity: “It’s the attention that freaks me out/Overthinking in my head again/I’m good at making [expletive] negative,” she croons on “Wanna Quit All the Time.”
“But Not Kiss,” a blissful track about craving intimacy with someone but not going all the way, started as a six-second voice memo. She said it was the most natural song to write. For Webster, her creative process begins where she’s the most comfortable: at home.
“I feel like I always have to be somewhat emotional, because that’s where it stems from,” she said about her songwriting. “But I definitely just write when I feel like it. I’ve never been the person that’s like, ‘so it’s time to write.’ ... Whenever I sit down to write something, by the time I stand up, it’s done.”
Michael Tyrone Delaney
Michael Tyrone Delaney
“Underdressed at the Symphony” was conceived after a breakup, but the album doesn’t have the tone of a breakup album at all. Webster replaces angst with dreamy introspection and funny lines. The album’s color theme is blue, but that doesn’t signify any sense of sadness: “Blue is a color that really makes me happy,” she said.
The LP is filled with Webster’s charmingly dry sense of humor. Take “Feeling Good Today,” where she states: “That way my dog goes outside/My neighbors know his name/Thought that was weird, but I’m over it.” Or “eBay Purchase History,” where she makes fun of her shopping list that includes Pokémon cards and other collectibles.
“I was just looking at mine one day and was just like, this is funny,” she said about the latter song. “If somebody saw this, they’d be like, ‘Who is she?’ Like, what is their personality?”
Photo courtesy of Secretly Canadian
Photo courtesy of Secretly Canadian
She talks about her knack for witty bars in a tone that’s so nonchalant it’s hard to tell if she even cares. After all, this is the same artist who titled her 2021 album “I Know I’m Funny Haha.”
“Humor is important to me in my life and just the people I surround myself to work with,” she said.
She credits her lasting friendships in Atlanta as another source of inspiration. She loves the camaraderie of the city’s music scene. One such friendship she holds dear to her heart is the one she shares with rapper Lil Yachty, whom she met in middle school.
The pair collaborated on “Lego Ring,” which dropped earlier this year.
“Before anything, that friendship is always going to be the most powerful thing to me. ... [Working with him] was fun,” she said. “We’ve done a bunch of songs together, so it was yet another thing I brought to the table. I’m very comfortable around him. I feel like I don’t really like to work around people, but that’s one person that I always have felt comfortable with.”
Later this month, the singer will embark on a U.S. tour that surprisingly doesn’t include any Atlanta dates as of this writing. But Webster promises that there will be one.
“Atlanta shows are always really important to me. I’ll always do a hometown show, so you’ll see.”
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