“Fear is a weird thing. Of course, I am afraid of the usual things: heights, the dark, and as a woman, being aware of my surroundings is a must,” says stef. “I would say a big fear of mine is not reaching my full potential. I know what I am capable of so when I let myself down, I feel disappointed.”
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Relatively new to the Nashville pop scene, the singer-songwriter reaches far beyond her potential on her latest EP. A Glitch in Our Virtual Reality, a concept record around “the life cycle in a relationship,” as she puts it, smolders with delicately sinister production, frequently sliding under the skin or into the eardrums. Bookended with an “intro” and “outro,” each piece serves an important purpose.
“The intro track represents the initial meeting of someone and how it can feel like sparks flying. Oftentimes, it turns into infatuation, but I wanted the intro moment to have sounds that represent love to me: waves, wind, birds, people talking. Picture a rom com in the ‘90s,” stef tells American Songwriter. With the “outro,” she leaves the listener “on a positive note. This life cycle will always start and end in the same place but…different. Once you recover from your hurt of the relationship, you will be happy again. But each encounter you have with someone in your life leaves an imprint on you and can change you, as well as teach you lessons.”
“kickin all the pieces of my heart,” co-written with frequent collaborators Rikki Randall and Christian Fiore, lurches with a peculiar mix of gooey pop hook and texture, owed largely to their own natural proclivity for left-of-center songwriting. “We are all very experimental and are all strong in the writing room─but we compliment each other well. We were messing around and keeping it quirky,” offers stef, “and we were like ‘how do we say this guy is playing games with you and hurting your feelings… he’s kickin all the pieces of your heart.’ I threw out the line ‘when I try to sweep them up into my dust pan,’ as a joke, but it quickly was not a joke. We decided to leave it in. It is one of the most experimental songs we have ever done. Christian referenced Kanye for the different transitional parts.”
Among the set’s darker elements, “hi, my name is lonely” draws upon a particularly bitter time in her life. “[That’s] where the comparison to another person came into play. I always like to keep things in my lower register and have a talky/conversational feel to it,” she says, noting the verses falling into this mold. “Loneliness is such a dark feeling, and the track is dark but upbeat, so people really enjoy it. Christian produced the track, and he is wickedly talented.”
Originally from Huntsville, Alabama, stef initially moved to Nashville in 2018 as a country artist but quickly realized it just wasn’t working out. “I knew I never wanted to be a country artist,” she admits, “but that was what was comfortable for me as an 18-year-old who moved to a city where she knew four people. Once I got more comfortable and my feet under myself, I was able to branch out and meet new people. As I met some people from the pop scene, it was all uphill and a constant grind. I still hold the values that country music has very near to my heart. I love strong songwriting, a play on words, imagery, and hooks.”
Once she made the transition, donning slicker pop production and less banjo and guitar, her songwriting soon expanded. “I can write an amazing country song because that is the genre I started in and also the genre I learned how to write songs in─not that there is any right way to write a song, but it did help having mentors who have had No. 1s give advice and guidance,” she explains. “Transitioning from writing songs on a guitar to a full on produced pop track, I felt like a deer in headlights. I had no idea what was going on, but thankfully after a few pop writes, I was able to jump in and hold my own.”
stef had her first pop songwriting session two years ago, and she hasn’t looked back. “I still continue to learn every day. What really was the binding foundation for me is I knew what I wanted to say and knew what I wanted to sound like when writing pop music so it was smooth sailing.”
Across A Glitch in Our Virtual Reality, from the electric stomping of “here’s what we’re not gonna do” to moody crunchiness in “switch,” stef not only exhibits her artistic growth but chronicles her own journey to self-worth. “All my life I have been extremely independent and very confident. I have always done my own thing and not been afraid to try new experiences, so I think self acceptance has come easy to me,” she says. “I am who I am, and I try not to let myself go down a rabbit hole of comparison.
“Something that is a challenge for me is the element of being in control of my own destiny. I am a very hard worker, and I know I am working the hardest I can, so it becomes tricky when I have a tendency to base my self-worth off of my successes and goals I want to reach,” she continues. “If I am not meeting those deadlines I have, for when I want things to happen, it has upset me in the past and made me think of myself as lesser than. That is the thing, though. I can only control myself, and I can not control anything else in the world. Not time, not other people’s perceptions, nothing, and I have come to terms with that over the last year, and I am better than ever.”
