There have been mentors in my life, and they often told me I could do anything I wanted to do. That I was free. And they were right. Yet I never really felt like that advice really applied to me, or even what it meant for me. And the song is me starting to ask: “What would be my kind of freedom?” I’ve tried to be free, but in trying, I was only following other people, men specifically, and their kind of freedom doesn’t apply to me. But perhaps there are other paths? It’s as I say in the song: “I’ve followed others, but it never occurred to them, (or even to me), to follow me.”

This song was the first song written for the record. It appeared after I got back from my first European tour, and redirected my whole mind and my ideas around what kind of music I could write. It just felt so good to sing words — so many words — to try and encompass a year, a million roads, and a feeling; a feeling of being truly seen by someone, but seen as better than you yourself see you.

The song is (in part) about a moment when someone saw me and was sure I’d be okay, when at the time, that wasn’t something I was at all sure of. And it’s about the poignancy of that feeling — the delicacy of it — being poised on the precipice of being okay, of full-out happiness even, but still knowing everything you’ve carried with you. Still, there you are, laughing in a foreign city, as though you’re a brand new person and you carry nothing.