Nashville songwriter Gatlin Thornton looks inward with her latest release, “Talking to Myself,” an indie pop anthem with folk bearings. It touches on an unsung challenge of post-breakup infirmity: the loss of a loved one’s listening ear.
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Following three similarly reflective one-offs she’s unveiled this year — including her debut, “Maniac,” which has garnered just under 200k streams on Spotify — “Talking to Myself” departs from Gatlin’s past acoustic-driven, Americana sound, instead taking a more electric approach with spacey keys, muted guitar thrums and synth pads. It’s a happy medium of power-pop and, as she and fans of Phoebe Bridgers put it, “sad girl music.”
“I listen to both sides of the spectrum,” Gatlin says. “Sort of like, Maggie Rogers is dance-pop, but her music also has folk elements. I feel like that’s what this is doing.”
She wrote the song with Michelle Buzz (Katy Perry, Steve Aoki) during a six-month period of concentrated co-writing within the Nashville song publishing community. In June, she was awarded BMI’s fourth annual Nashville Songwriting Scholarship.
“I started writing with everyone,” she says. “I just fell in love with it.”
“Talking to Myself” is sung from a girl who’s not yet comfortable with her single status, unsure of who to tell about her day now that her love is lost. Her routine is broken; her decisions, unvalidated. So, she talks to herself.
“It’s those few seconds when you wake up,” she explains. “When you forget you’ve broken up. Like, being so used to talking about everything when they’re there, but now that they’re not, you’re just by yourself and lonely.”
Gatlin is currently working on a full-length release, entitled Elaine and set to arrive in the next few months. Stream her music here.
