From Blueprints to Breakthrough: Chloe Southern on Songwriting, New York, and Growth
Photos by Alec Ilstrup
Chloe Southern is a Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter and producer whose music blends an effortless combination of folk-rock and cinematic pop. Originally from Boulder, Colorado, she crafts deeply introspective songs that explore themes of love, solitude, and emotional complexity. With a distinctively ethereal vocal style and atmospheric production, Chloe’s work resonates with listeners seeking raw, confessional storytelling. Her most recent EP, The Cure and the Cause, showcases her ability to transform painful personal experiences into immersive sonic landscapes.
I remember when I met you. I think I met you right in the height of you promoting your EP.
You met me the night it came out. The literal fucking night it came out.
I saw your Instagram and all this amazing stuff you were doing for it, and I was like, I gotta talk to you. And it didn't happen. I'm kicking myself because I wish I would have talked to you then. I was just so impressed by everything that you were doing. What all did you do? You did the release party with Mer [Marcum], all the merch you were making [including olive oil and custom white tanks] , and you did some sort of dinner, right? You invited me. Was that also part of the EP?
First of all, thank you. Second of all, I am so glad we did not do this at that time, because I was not a human being. November, December of last year, post the EP release, and I wrote about this a little bit on my Substack — I had a full crash out. I was not emotionally there. I was thinking about this today. There's a time I'm so grateful for us to be doing this, it's right now. Meredith and I did that duo release party, which was so fun. Best part of that night for me was when she played a house remix of “Blueprints.”
Did she make it?
She made it. I did the party, and then a week later, I did a release show at Cassette. I ended up selling that out, which was really big for me. I think the cap is either 100 or 120, but my first show ever in New York was two years prior, almost to the date of that. That was like a 50-cap room, and I think exactly 50 people came. It was really a big moment for me to be like, “Damn, okay, we are progressing numerically.” It was just me playing an acoustic guitar, and then my friend Nicky playing electric. It was the perfect way to celebrate it because that's how I wrote all the songs, by the guitar. It felt really personal. I also did the dinner that you saw, which was kind of geared towards the release of the EP. It was called Kefi Occasion. It was centered around my Substack, which is called Kefi. The whole idea was getting people together in a room who I didn't know, and talk about music, and having the topic of discovery be the whole theme. It was with 10 people, and I did it in partnership with The Luna Collective, which you might know.
It's a magazine, right?
Yeah. They're really awesome. I've been a fan of theirs for years, so that was really cool that they wanted to do it with me. We're gonna continue working together. Three of my friends run a production company called Prism. They helped me too. We worked really closely together to create that, and it lined up perfectly with the EP. Everybody from the dinner came to the EP release show, which was amazing. But, yeah, it was a really busy time. I appreciate you for telling and reflecting back to me that it was a lot that I was doing. I have a hard time kind of acknowledging that.
It was a lot!
Yeah, it was a lot. Even just putting a song out was emotionally a lot.
I was reading your Substack. And I haven't even said it yet, but I love the EP. I was listening to it this morning. The production, the rock ‘n’ roll entry of it, and then, like you were telling me, yeah, it's so sad. Let me just say — not only do I truly love it musically, and don’t take this the wrong way – I think part of the reason why I've always been fascinated with musicians is that I don't consider myself to be an incredibly emotional person, but you are incredibly emotional in the most beautiful way. I love this outpour of emotion by artists, because it's something that I myself don't have, and I just find it so interesting. Have you always been this way? You are so good at articulating it, and making something of it.
Wow. Thank you for saying that. That’s the biggest compliment. I've always been an almost unbearably emotional person, and it manifested itself when I was a kid. I was so anxious. I had insane separation anxiety from my parents. I couldn't be alone. … I’m an empath. [We laugh.] It's true. I can't help it. It's just very true. It's a double edged sword. I've been very emotional, but also very self aware. I think I can outsmart my feelings and talk myself through it. It means so much for me to hear you say what you just said, coming from a place of not being a super emotional person, and then being able to hear yourself and the emotions that are hard for you to have reflected in something. When something is hard for me to say, or for me to process, I know I have to say it. I know I have to write about it because if I, an insanely emotional open book, am struggling, I know that there is someone who wouldn't, in a million years, admit that about themselves or say that. Music means so many things to me, and it's such a loaded thing. At the root of it, I know what it feels like to go through some really fucked shit, fucked up feelings, and feel really alone and unseen. If I can make someone feel like, “Oh, that's a little bit of me right there,” or, “I'm too scared to tell anybody that, but I'm not crazy for feeling this way or for dealing with it in this way” — like that is everything to me. To answer your question, yeah, I've been crying my eyes out since I was born.
I know you have new stuff coming out. Is it cool that we're talking about The Cure and the Cause too?
Oh, for sure, for sure. I'm super happy to be talking about this. I never really got to. Honestly, I didn't feel like I did enough, really, with how much I loved that project. I didn't have the emotional bandwidth, that I'm now realizing, to give a little bit more love to it, show a little more love to it.
How did The Cure and the Cause come to be?
All these songs, besides “Walden Pond,” I wrote, more or less, during my last year of college and my first year being in New York. I graduated college in 2022 and moved my ass straight to New York. The first year being here was really tough. I was in the thick of it with the person that the EP is about, and just dealing with the aftermath of it all. I was writing so much. At the end of 2023, I was living with one of my producers, Tucker Bickell. I was showing him all these songs, and I knew I wanted to start producing them. I started with “This Time Last Year,” and then once that was halfway through, I was just looking at all of these songs that I had, and I was like, “These five right here. These five are telling my story. These are telling our story,” me and this person. I know we both were feeling these ways a lot of the time, which is kind of a fucked up backwards thing for me because it's all my perspective, obviously. But it's strange to know that he can listen to it and feel like, “I was feeling this way too.” I would stand in front of a bus for every single one of these songs. I love them more than any music I've ever put out before. I wrote “The Cure and the Cause” in one night during my senior year of college. It was such an intense night. That song is an accumulation of the overarching theme of the whole EP. These three songs tell the story of being on either end of a spectrum of intensity with somebody. I think once I realized that I had a concept and story, it was really easy for me to narrow down the songs and commit to the bit, I guess, which was a little scary. There's so many left over, and those are songs that I have in the vault now. But yeah, I started with “This Time Last Year,” and then the rest followed.
You had the songs already written. What was the process of putting it together?
I've never gotten a chance to reflect on this. This is so nice for me. I love it. I started producing the music at the end of 2023. It was crunch time from the end of September 2023 through around March of 2024. All the recording was happening. I produced it with my friends, Jack Harrington and Tucker [Bickell]. I love them so much. During some of the sessions, I realized, just given the subject matter, and especially being men in the industry, you have to be a good fucking guy. They are such good guys. They allowed me the space to show up, and for our entire sessions, just cry. I’d be like, “Sorry, vocals aren't happening today.” It was a really intense process, but one that’s obviously very cathartic. I also worked with this guy, Joe Ippolito, to mix it. He's amazing. I love him so much. That was a very life changing experience. He's mixed some records that I'm absolutely obsessed with, and to hear my record sound that way it was, it was really life changing.
The production is so beautiful.
Thank you so much. “This Time Last Year” was probably my favorite one in terms of the production. Well, that's hard to say, but I never thought I could make a song like that. I think the toughest part — the mixing and production of it all was so seamless — it was just hard on the emotional side of things. Right when I was getting the masters for this project, I learned some really hard-to-swallow and fucked up news about the time that it was written about, like the guy that it was written about. It was the whole thing, and I didn't know about it until May of 2024. So it was really hard for me as a person to deal with the music, because there was the life of it that I have lived, and now the life of it that was happening that I didn't know about when I was writing all these songs. I had to recontextualize a lot of it. It's really still very complicated for me to process, which is why I fucking crashed out, but I'm at the point now where I can look at it a little bit more objectively. As a musician, I've never felt better. I've never felt more proud as a person.
Do you listen to the songs differently now? Is it hard not to?
Sometimes. I have bad days sometimes. I think it's important for me to hold myself accountable. That is something I can choose, in a way. Then it makes it about not the music, if I listen to it and decide to be blameful or resentful. Objectively, it's a song I'd stand in front of a bus for, and no one can take that away from me. The people that have taken so much from me, they will not take the songs too. I refuse. That's where I draw the line.
That’s heavy. To me, it just makes the EP that much more powerful. You should be fucking proud. You went through a war to get to the other end of this.
Thank you for saying that.
And it should be something that you remember as such. You can say, “I have an EP.” You have something to show for.
In spite of it all, yeah. Thank you for saying that. That makes me feel very good. It’s easy to exploit your shit, your trauma, your experiences. It’s really easy to exploit other people for your own personal gain. I’m just not about that. I never wanted to capitalize on the shift. It was really different and difficult for me, but I didn't have to make it hard for everybody else to listen to. I just wanted it to be what it was. Those songs felt like the only pure thing I had of that time left. It's like a time capsule. When I wrote “Blueprints,” the memory of when I wrote that bridge, that is a bubble of goodness. Even though some fuck shit was going on, when I'm back in that world and those experiences, nothing bad is happening. It is that world and love that was true. That makes me feel better about it.
Tell me how you approach songwriting and lyrics.
Lyrics and what I'm saying is the most important thing to me. I always lead with that. I do notice that A., it gets me stuck because if it's not perfect, I can't move on. And B., I want to be a little better about being well-rounded with my focus. I find that it can be my crutch. I don't really think about, “Oh, could this melody be better? Could this chord progression be a little bit different?” I mean, I do, but it's easier for me to challenge myself on the lyricism rather than the other aspects. The lyrics are the most important thing to me just because it's a direct reflection of myself. I always want to have a heavy hand in production too. Now, being in a place where I don't have so much personal life shit to deal with, I have this time and the bandwidth to really focus. I just want to feel every year that I'm better at my craft than I've ever been.
Who and what are some of your inspirations?
I've always been inspired and influenced by New York City. All the writers, art, and music that has come out of here. My dad grew up here, and my grandpa was one of those artists. I'm so inspired by him, too. He was a writer in his own right. Not a songwriter, but I grew up hearing so much about him. Also seeing my dad make his own art, that has always been so inspiring to me. I've never wanted to do anything else. It always was the plan to end up here. And I'm a Beatles girl to my core.
They’re my first ones.
They're my boys. They're our boys. Especially in the last couple years, I absolutely lost myself in Paul's solo project, and albums like Ram.
Ram is one of my favorite albums of all time.
Ram is one of my favorite albums of all time.
What other old music inspires you?
I'm like you in that sense. In my upbringing, I was just immersed in old ass music. Last time I was home for the holidays, I literally looked my dad in the eyes, and I was like, “You are the reason I have any taste, and I love you.” Amy Winehouse taught me how to be honest. I’ve heard a bit of Frank, but I love Back To Black. The subject matter of that album is just so raw, especially knowing the context behind it. Had she actually taken care of herself, we wouldn't have had that album, so it's definitely a double edged sword. Hearing her say, “I am doing fucked up shit,” and she’s not even sorry about it. “This is how it is. This is what's going on. I'm just as human as the rest of you.” I heard that, and I thought I also just want to make music that people can relate to: “Oh, maybe I'm not so fucked. Maybe I'm not as alone in my thoughts and my feelings as I think.” I'm feeling so inspired right now by the creative energy of New York. I'm so lucky to have the friends that I do in so many different pockets of the New York music and art scene. It's the biggest blessing honestly. I’m so inspired by my friends all the time and the art that they're making. At the end of the day, I'm an oldies girl at heart. If I could make an album one day that is a quarter as good as Ram or anything close to that, I will die happy.
What else about the EP do you want to talk about? Give a moment to?
What I really want to say is, listen to “Walden Pond,” because that one is fucking slept on.
Why is it slept on? You said that you wrote that one separately from the others.
That one I wrote in 2023. It’s the most recent one. I think I always thought, as you always do, with a relationship or a situation that doesn't end the way that you expected it to, one day this will make sense. One day I'll get this. I kept waiting for that to happen, and it never did. I just couldn't write a song that could make it all make sense. I couldn't put it into words, which was the most frustrating thing for me, as someone who's personal livelihood depends on that. So I wrote a song about feeling that way. It captured a feeling that I never thought I'd be able to capture and feel. They're all just so special to me. Anybody who has listened or will listen in the future, I am so grateful. It just means so much to me that anybody is even listening at all to “Walden Pond,” and to any of them.
You have lots of musician friends in town.
I’m so lucky to have the friends that I do and know the people that I know. I don't take for granted one day the position that I am in. Being in an apartment, having a roof and a fridge full of food in New York City (or in Brooklyn, I guess). Living with people that I love, making music with people that I love. How could I not have this fire under my ass at all times to meet the people who are making this city what I love? I know you feel similarly. I think that's how I expanded my people; going to shows, playing shows, saying yes to everything, and now I’m in a position where I don't feel the pressure to do that all the time. A night in doesn't feel sacrilegious.
I've made it my job to connect with people. I've made that my job because I love it. That’s what keeps me going. When I go out, it’s a work opportunity, maybe a life opportunity. I meet people. I meet someone new who’s gonna introduce me to something new. With everything going on around us, what’s inspiring you right now?
What's inspiring me right now, at this very second, in this musical artistic climate that we're in, is seeing women in positions that men have been in for so fucking long. Saying shit that men have been saying, doing things that men have been doing. It honestly touches me in a way that makes me emotional to think about, because we all know that we can do it. Perfect examples are Doechii, Chappell, or Charli finally having the moments that they’ve been deserving for so long. And I don’t make music like any of them. They weren’t even my top Spotify artists. I'm so invested in them because it's the most incredible thing I've ever fucking seen.
Tell me about your new songs.
I can’t tell you what it is, but I can tell you that it’s being created. Last year, I wrote two songs. I didn't feel like a songwriter.
You were busy.
I know, but still. I’m in a place now where I’m writing again. I feel more in touch with my creative inspiration and artistry than I ever have in my life. I really feel like once I got this haircut, I was like, “I'm a different person.” The stuff I’m writing is a little more about me, my thoughts and views on how my relationships have affected me, how I view myself, and how I view the world. There's definitely gonna be at least another EP this year. The stuff I'm writing is about the nitty gritty of not only being in your 20s, but being young and dealing with some really adult shit before you ask for it. Like being a bigger person, and the aftermath that comes with that. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows when you decide to be a good person or take the high road, or not be a good or bigger person and take the high road. I’m trying to not put too much pressure on it. I was just up in Queens for three days straight, working with my friend Jack, and I feel really excited about the music that I'm making. For the first time, instead of being scared of it …, which The Cure and the Cause, I loved it more than anything, but it was kind of scary. I had to keep the music at arm’s length. All I want to do is write, sing, and be immersed in it all the time. It's what I'm living and dealing with right now. I think for a while, I thought that I had to live it, completely understand it, and internalize it, and then I could write about it. I’m trying a new approach. I don't know what it's gonna be exactly, but I do know that it's really exciting. I want to write songs that make me feel, but also that I could dance to in my room. I never thought I could do both. I’m realizing that I can and leaning into that as much as I can.
What do you want to do this year?
The way that I felt about every song on The Cure and the Cause, that's my standard. Every song or piece of art I create, I want to love more than anything. I'm lucky that I get to do what I do. I don't ever want to sacrifice that. I just want to love the music that I make. I want to have more dinner parties. I want to hang out with my sister more. I want to go to the movies more. I wanna learn how to do the splits because I’ve been wanting to for like 10 years. I want to be around people who I do not question their intentions, who I can trust with my whole heart. I know if that means less people, so be it, I don't care. All I care about is having fun and making music, being in New York, being around people that I know would have my back. That’s all that matters to me. And doing the splits.
Any final words?
Not enough can be said about how you can change somebody's life by being genuine and being there for them and showing them that you love them. You have no idea how far that can go. Be a good friend, be a good person, and do something in this life that will give you good karma for your next one. It’s not that hard to be a good person. Spread as much love as you possibly can.
Listen to Chloe’s music here.
