Amelia Day is bringing the timeless sound, comforting acoustic instrumentation, and poetic storytelling of folk rock music from a lesbian perspective to the Nashville music scene and beyond.
Fresh off her first solo tour on the West Coast, Day has been taking both her home state of Washington and the city of Nashville by storm as an independent artist, selling out iconic venues like the Triple Door in Seattle and playing festivals like Seattle PrideFest and Capitol Hill Block Party.
Sonic Hub recently got the chance to sit down with Day, taking a deep dive into her creative process, what it means to be labeled as a lesbian artist, and her latest single, “The Songwriter.”
Day spent her childhood in Sumner, Washington. Naturally drawn to music and art from a young age, she filled her time with creative endeavors, immersing herself in classic folk and rock music, writing poetry and stories, and composing short melodies on the piano. Her natural love for writing and composition eventually evolved into experimenting with songwriting; she’s visibly embarrassed to tell me she wrote her first song in fifth grade at Vacation Bible School.
“I remember thinking, ‘These lyrics are so basic. I could write this easily.’ I went home and I wrote a song about forgiveness,” she laughs. “I didn’t mean it, I was literally just following the formula. It wasn't from some deep part of my soul.”
Day began songwriting in earnest in seventh or eighth grade, “really angsty stuff,” she says. Music quickly became her biggest passion, quite literally consuming her every waking moment. Day laughs as she tells me she played soccer in middle school, and instead of playing the game, she would daydream about music and even about what visual art would best accompany her songs.
Similar to a lot of people in the LGBTQ+ community, Day grew up in a religious household, which deeply influenced her songwriting. Though she no longer considers herself to be religious, she views Christian stories in a more academic and literary way, akin to Greek mythology, another significant influence on her lyricism.
“It's such a shared experience of a lot of queer people, growing up with the church and feeling that conflict of, these are some of the closest people in my life, and yet I have this very big part of me hidden from them that I don’t think I could talk about, or they’ll judge me for it in some way, even if they won’t necessarily,” she says.
Even though her parents conformed to conservative values, Day says they have been “really wonderful” and nothing but accepting. In fact, they were the ones who initiated the conversation about her sexuality, and their goal from the start was to create a space that made her feel safe, loved, and supported.
“It wasn’t something that I brought to them, and I’m not upset that they brought up that conversation, because that made me feel okay,” she says.
Day views herself as an artist first and foremost, but she thinks the balance between self-identifying as a lesbian artist and just a “normal” artist is, to put it simply, incredibly complicated.
“I'm just gonna write about my personal experiences, and especially lately, write very openly about my queerness and how I feel, both from a gender expression space as well as sexuality space, but that’s never going to be all that I write about,” she says. “I’m a full person with many experiences and thoughts, but that's always going to come through, even if I’m not explicitly writing a song about being queer.”
Day’s songwriting process is not linear or routine by any means; her boundless creativity, eloquent lyricism, and rich musicality are driven by concepts and well-honed intuition. For her, musical and lyrical inspiration for a song can spring from anything. Sometimes, little melodies and patterns will run continuously in her head, accompanied by words or even just vowels, leaving her with an intuitive sense of what the phrasing or complete melody sounds like.
“I mostly start from the concept. That’s probably where the roots of most of my songs are, and in tandem with that, interesting chord progressions that I’m finding a melody around,” she says. “And then often [it’ll] fit with this concept that I’ve been sitting with, or something that I’ve been reflecting on a lot.”
It’s extremely rare that Day writes a full song draft in a day, and on the rare occasion she does, it’s almost never the final version. A lover of literature and reading ever since childhood, she’s very intentional with the words she uses to crafts her lyrics, ensuring every word encapsulates exactly what she’s trying to express in the most eloquent, creative way possible.
“If it’s still not quite ready, I’m like, ‘This feels like a basic way to say this. This feels like it’s not reached its full emotional potential,’” she says. “I probably won’t set the line down yet. I’ll just keep churning at it until I get something more compelling.”
Day tells me she’s learned that what differentiates good lyricism from great lyricism is understanding the difference between repetition and parallelism. Repetition is redundant; parallelism enhances existing lyricism through precise and thoughtful alteration.
“Every single line, every single image that you’re putting into a song should reveal something new, should engage differently,” she says. “Maybe the bridge flips everything on its head, or when the chorus comes back around, you have this new context that you’ve added in the first perspective, like the second verse, or something that makes the chorus hit even harder.”
Around half of Day’s songwriting explores her personal life and relationships, and the other half are slightly more nebulous reflections and musings. Like a lot of Gen Z and LGBTQ+ artists, she’s never shied away from incorporating political themes and social critiques into her songwriting.
“Losing out on some streams and some attention is well worth being able to put a voice to something that is important to speak about, especially if your rights are being put on the line. You have an obligation to speak up for people who might not be able to advocate for themselves as much, or be listened to as much,” she says. “And I think a lot of the music that I’m going to be releasing in the future is gonna have some of that political edge in there, not even trying to make a statement or something. It’s what I’m thinking about.”
Day’s newest single, “The Songwriter,” explores the life of her musical idol, Joni Mitchell, parasocial relationships, and the deeply human desire to be known. And it all started with a college writing assignment.
Two years ago, in her sophomore year at Vanderbilt University, Day was given a prompt to write about an artist she admired for her songwriting class, and she happened to be listening to Mitchell’s music for the first time. Immediately inspired Mitchell’s lyricism and sound, Day wrote “The Songwriter,” well, at least part of it. She ended up submitting the song half-written purely because the deadline hit, and she wasn’t completely finished or satisfied with it. But she continued to fine-tune the song to her own standards and taste, disregarding her professor’s suggestion to make it purely biographical instead of biographical and self-reflective.
Over two years later, “The Songwriter” is finally finished. The lyrically rich and expertly cohesive track blends classic folk and country rock in an intoxicating way; Day’s slightly twangy, impressively powerful, and effortlessly deft vocals perfectly compliment the strummy acoustic guitar, bongos, and cello, painting a beautifully nostalgic and classic soundscape.
The song revolves around the human desire to be known; Day examines the concept both in the self-reflective, introspective context of her own songwriting and through the lens of Joni Mitchell’s approach to her art. She sings in the chorus, “Now, everybody listens to the songwriter; Claimin’ they know every single world; Now, everybody sings the songs of the writer; But no one knows the writer but her.”
“You can express a lot of your personal self through your art and everything, but nobody can ever fully know you,” Day says. “And that is one of the most awful, terrifying things my life, but it’s true. No matter how close you are to somebody, nobody really knows you but yourself. And you might not even know yourself very well.”
The release of “The Songwriter” marks the beginning of a booked and busy year for Day. She’s currently planning to release three more singles and step back into the studio in the near future, and her first East Coast tour kicks off in March.
As her musical prowess blossoms and her auspicious career takes off, Amelia Day’s goals are to remain true to herself and her values, and to continue to find her true joy and fulfilment in the beauty of artistry and music.
“I think the music industry is very, I mean, the fact that it’s called ‘the music industry,’ the product is music. I hate that!” she laughs. “There’s a lot of pressure to brand yourself and to stand out a certain way. And people will create music intended to do that, and that’s never going to be my approach.”
Follow Amelia Day on Instagram and TikTok, and stream her newest single, “The Songwriter,” here. Listen to her discography here.
WORDS ALLYSON PARK
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