Grammy-winning Nashville artist Buick Audra will be releasing her latest album, Adult Child, this Friday, June 13th. A raw, intimate concept record exploring identity, estrangement, and inherited patterns, the album chronicles Audra’s childhood, growing up without typical emotional support and the lifelong effects of that upbringing. Producing the album herself, Adult Child is a testament to healing, growth and reclaiming ones identity.
Audra has shared with us a deep-dive into each of the nine tracks from the album, as well as an exclusive early stream of it on Bandcamp. Enjoy!
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1. “THE WORST PEOPLE WIN”: I started writing Adult Child a few months after the release of my solo album before it, CONVERSATIONS WITH MY OTHER VOICE. I called that record a memoir-in-songs; it was all about my relationship with my literal and figurative voice, and the stories that had contributed to it. Some of those stories involved other people and their unsavory/hurtful behavior. To my dismay (but not surprise), several people responded to those revelations by defending their relationships/affiliations with folks who had harmed me. Writing “The Worst People Win” was me responding to that, kicking off this project with a note of acceptance but also wariness. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in recent years, it’s that I can’t change anyone but myself. So, this is a big ol’ anthem about accepting that some people feel too little empathy – but also that I have the right to avoid them. Musically, it’s a bit complex, with odd bars and other trickery, which feels correct when addressing the push-and-pull of human dynamics.
2. “QUESTIONS FOR THE GODS OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR”: This was the first song written for Adult Child, and the song that let me know which direction I was headed with this project. It’s about realizing that I still (only on occasion) sign up for weird relationships with people, ones in which too much is shared too soon—and somehow, I always end up being in the supportive role. Spent a lot of my life feeling unworthy, so this is an old habit that I’ve mostly broken, but I’m imperfect in all things, including this. I love that the chorus and verses are in different keys – that modulation matches the revelatory moment of going, “Oh, am I repeating these things I didn’t want done to me? Am I making my life hard?” This might be my favorite track on the album.
3. “YELLOW”: This track was a complete surprise and one that very nearly didn’t happen. I wrote this after I thought the instrumental tracking for the album was done. I was in the middle of tracking vocals when it came to me. It’s about the second full-band session for Adult Child, during which I said I hated myself (kind of jokingly, kind of not) two times in front of my collaborators. Being self-deprecating is an old, lifelong behavior that I don’t need anymore, and I wanted to get the root of it. So, I wrote this song on the subject, wrote about being from a weird family that insists that I’m less than everyone around me, and I how I don’t need to carry it anymore. The track was built by taking drum performances by Jerry Roe, cutting them up, and then playing guitar over that. Really flipped out with the vocals on this one, which felt right for a song about overthinking my own actions.
4. “ONE-STEP CLOSE-UP”: This is an uncharacteristically upbeat song for me! It’s named after my Polaroid camera that I’ve had since I was a kid. I did all of the album and singles artwork with that camera. The song is actually about making room for myself in my own life, though, and prioritizing my own care and interests—which I was absolutely not raised or socialized to do. The song takes it one step further by celebrating self-regard and self-documentation in the form or art and music, which is what I believe I’m here to do.
5. “BIRTHDAYS & BULLSHIT”: The thing that no one wants to tell you, is that developing a better relationship with yourself may cost you some of your old relationships. It has absolutely been the case for me. I had all of these weird friendships that seemed perfectly normal to me for years, until I started to notice that they liked to take cheap shots at my solo music, they could only address me as one half of my marriage, and we spent an awful lot of time focusing on their lives—leaving little room for mine. The title BIRTHDAYS & BULLSHIT refers to the roles women are often expected to play with other women: keeper of the birthdays and other holidays, maintaining the familial lines. No thanks. Musically, it’s the heaviest track on the record, and it changes keys three times by the time you get to the chorus. I like that. I like mods in conjunction with new layers of awareness.
6. “IT ALL BELONGED TO ME”: This song too me three years to write, but once I got it to this state, it quickly became a favorite on the project. It’s about loving my hometown of Miami from a distance, while also revealing that I don’t go back anymore. I haven’t been home in a decade. I’m estranged from all three of my parental figures and one of them still lives there. There was a long stretch of time there where I just kind of left Miami behind, because the situation was too painful
to deal with. But in this song—and in the chapter of my life—I’m fully reclaiming it as mine. The recording ended up being much more intimate than I initially expected, and now I can’t imagine it any other way.
7. “LOSING MY COURAGE”: Though I initially wrote this song on guitar, I knew right away that I wanted to record it with only vocals. There’s something about these statements of survival and struggle that demand to be presented in a more stark, direct way. The idea for this composition came to me after I had a panic attack on stage and couldn’t perform a song that I’ve played about a million times. For weeks after, I didn’t want to play that piece of music, fearing it would happen again. My bandmate asked me about it, and I said, “I’m losing my courage.” I’m familiar with this cycle; I’ve been through versions of it before—and what I never want to hear from other people, is what I should do about it. People walk around out here like they’re all licensed therapists, but they’re not. Most of us have a hard time hearing other people when they speak of their difficulties, instead thinking of ourselves and how we would respond. This song is me rejecting that tendency and just saying: let me have this hard time; it will pass. Hear me in it. I had a beautiful time recording these vocals late at night in the studio alone.
8. “FIRSTBORN”: The only acoustic track on Adult Child! And it was always intended to be so. There’s so much acceptance baked into this track, so much ease—which is not typical for me. This piece was written very quickly and tracked shorty thereafter. I love all of the performances. “FIRSTBORN” is about being the family member that was born into a specific set of expectations, ones that I honored for a long time, but now I don’t. Now I’m way over here living my life by a new set of guidelines, doing my best to surround myself with people who care about me, and whom I care for right back. None of that is exactly easy, but there is a peace that I didn’t have before. Does a small part of me still hope that any of my parental figures might be able to see and hear me at some point? Sure. But the rest of me knows better and moves on. Seemed fitting for the this to be the last actual song on the album. A worthy punctuation.
9. “A LIST”: I love this little piece of writing so much. It says, yeah, I know about not carrying all of it around forever. I get it. But also, we get to learn from what happened, and for that reason: I’m keeping track. I keep a list. This is the second spoken piece I’ve ever tracked, and I really enjoyed adding it to the project. It was recorded on a handheld mini-tape recorder that I had to repair before I could do this. I had to replace the world’s tiniest machine belt. Worth it! And if you let this track play out and the record starts over again, it sets up “The Worst People Win” quite nicely. It’s intentional.
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Listen to and purchase the album on Bandcamp and stream the pre-released tracks here on Spotify.
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