“Shining” Nashville Artist Noah Pope Releases New, Introspective Single
Photo by Sophia Wassem
Anxiety perseveres within all of our relationships and shows up at the worst possible moments. We have all experienced the flutter of nerves when engaging in weighted conversations with those we hold dear to us. Analyzing the antics of the way we converse within both our platonic and romantic relationships, Nashville based artist Noah Pope gives us a resonating new single that acknowledges the well known stress of tough situations. Speaking through a lens of understanding and emotional clarity in his fifth single “Shining.” Released on May 23rd, Noah recounts his feelings of anxiety and sympathy during a difficult conversation in lyrical form. With light pop notes and sweet, comforting vocals, “Shining” is a delicate nod towards an understanding of our personal relationships. In a conversation with Unpublished Magazine, Noah reflected on his new solo project, creative processes, and the details behind his latest single “Shining.”
Photo by George Rezek
[UNPUBLISHED]: Thank you for sitting down with us! How are you today? What have you been up to?
[NOAH]: I'm good. My little brother hung out with me and my wife. I come from a big family. So, I have eight siblings total and he is eight and he was just up here hanging out. We hung out all day long and rode scooters and went to the gas station on scooters and went to a pond and saw some very big old koi fish. Then I dropped him back off and I came home and I have just been working on some songs and stuff. So, it's been a chill day.
[UNPUBLISHED]: We’re about halfway through 2023, how’s the year treating you so far?
[NOAH]: It's been good. It's been a lot of new stuff. This project is really new and this is the first year that I've kind of made this my main gig and focus. I'm a drummer so I play in a lot of bands and stuff like that. But, I've never had a project that was my own, that I could have complete creative freedom with. So that's what this year has been all about and it's been really exciting and really fresh and new and stuff. Yeah, it's been a great half of the year so far.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you tell us about what inspired this solo project?
[NOAH]: Basically, I started writing songs for this project at the beginning of last year and I was playing in a couple other bands at the time. I had some creative roles with some other projects, but I felt like I needed to give these new songs the full attention and really focus on them and try and make them the best that they could possibly be. So, I stepped away from a couple other projects and committed to doing this for a month and I finished the first EP then. And it was awesome. It was a very new process for me too because I mixed and produced it all. It's like the first thing I've ever done producing wise. My own band and my own producing and whatever I wanted to do, I could do. I also recorded it in my house, so I had complete full creative comfort. I'm pretty introverted, so I like being in a comfortable space like that. So, that's kind of how it started and then I played a show in my house. We do a lot of house shows here. We have a big backyard and we usually do bigger shows out there. But, we did a intimate acoustic vibe show once or twice last summer and I played one of them and that was the first time playing these songs for anybody else outside of my roommate and my wife Christina and a couple of close friends. And it went really well and everyone was like, "you gotta keep doing this." I guess I'm pretty shy and it's all new. It's like being scared to put your first project out by yourself. You know, it feels very much like it has to be a perfect representation of myself and all that pressure was something I've been scared of for so long. So, it was really a huge growth moment, putting out the first EP.
Once I did it, I realized it’s just all around good things that come out of sharing music with other people. I fear so much that people aren't gonna like it or it's not gonna be received well but it's only been positive things. I think that's just a misunderstanding I've had about releasing music. Then, in the fall, my friend Daniel Nunnelee, who's a folk artist, asked me to open up for his tour for a month in November. So, that was the first thing with this project that was official and not just me working on my own time. So, that was in November and October. I finished the EP and started putting it out around that time. Since then, it's just been all that kind of stuff, just making more music and working on songs and getting to do it more and more. My real dream is to be able to make songs all day and go to sleep at night and not really have any other things to worry about. It's hard to find a good balance of music and drumming and everything and not have it feel like this constant grind. My big dream with this project is to be able to get to a point where I can just record songs all day for myself or for other people or whatever that looks like.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You’re releasing a new single called “Shining.” Can you share with us the inspiration and story behind this song?
[NOAH]: So, the song is about dealing with the frustration of not being able to articulate yourself or explain your emotions when you're in a time when you really need to. Like in a conversation with an important relationship in your life or when you feel like there's pressure. Kind of what we've been talking about, all this pressure and stuff. I get anxious a lot and the song is about when you're in the moment and you're having a hard conversation with somebody and you need to articulate something, but you can't get yourself to say what's really on your mind, you lock up. I do this all the time when I'm in hard conversations, it's really hard for me to be completely honest without feeling afraid that I'm not going to make sense. So, it's easier for me to just not say anything. Then it's always later that I'm like now I can tell you what I was thinking or how I was feeling. I just couldn't get it out in the moment. And it's about that frustration of feeling like you can't say what's really on your mind when you need to at the most crucial moments. I wrote it really fast. All the words and stuff just came out really quick. Just trying to capture that feeling more than anything over the big picture, especially at the end. The end is when the big bass comes in, the drums come in. That's the biggest moment where it's like I can't do this, I can't express what I'm trying to express. Then the chorus is trying to say something along the lines of I have all these ideas of what to say in my head, but I can't get them out. And the person that you're talking to has reason to be upset or has reason to be frustrated towards you because you can't explain to them why you're upset.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you have a favorite lyric or instrumental part of the song?
[NOAH]: My favorite lyric is in the second verse. I just think this is a cool lyric. It means something to me. But, I don't know if it will mean something to other people. But, it says, "Did I drive too far down a dead end road? Like I got the keys but don't know where to go." I meant for that to mean when you're in a conversation and you're saying something and you go down this rabbit trail. Maybe it's really not hitting home for the other person or maybe it's really not addressing the actual problem at hand.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You have a music video coming out for the song, can you tell me what your vision behind it was?
[NOAH]: I made it with my roommate in a day. I think it's really cool. It's kind of weird and it's very DIY. It's my wife's camera, but I use it probably more than her but it's this little digital old camera. We went to the median on an interstate and the whole thing is just one shot with a bunch of little clips from my iPhone and a bunch of other stuff that I threw on there. But, the main meat and potatoes of the video is just this one shot the whole time and it's me running from way back in the middle of the interstate median and getting closer and closer and closer. Then at the end, it's very crazy, shaky and wild and abstract at the end. But, it had a lot of shiny things in it. I really like to think of music videos as more visualizers, just something to look at and enjoy as you're listening to the song and less of a big story or a performance kind of thing. Some form of video that expresses the same emotion in a way. So, that's kind of what I tried to do with it. It should be watched and then it will be understood. It's expressing the emotion behind the song as best I could with a camera.
[UNPUBLISHED]: You released an EP earlier this year titled Closer, what was the inspiration behind this EP and your creative process here?
[NOAH]: The EP was all about love and all about relationships and I've always made music in the past that was very abstract and I guess less of a clear statement for each song and more abstract writing. And for this EP, I had all these new songs about my relationship with Christina, my wife, for the most part. It's a lot of subjects with what we've gone through in our relationship. I've never had a friend like her for that long where it's someone that you go through so many different things together. You know, good things and really bad, hard things. I just feel like I've learned a lot more about being in a longer term relationship and how to make a relationship last longer. The EP deals with a lot of those realizations. So many things are not as complicated as they seem at the moment, it's just a larger thing that you both have to be working towards getting better and you both have to be willing to admit that you've done something wrong. You can never ask too many questions in a relationship. It's about learning how to understand someone even better and they're not just songs to a lover, they can be songs for any kind of relationship. I feel like relationships are all so similar in that way. You both have to be willing to communicate to the other person the same with romantic and friendship relationships. It's all driven by love at the core, which is very hippie. But, very true.
[UNPUBLISHED]: For people who haven’t listened to your music before, how would you introduce your sound?
[NOAH]: I say it's like emotional folk rock and a little poppy too. I want it to become more poppy. The EP is not very poppy. But, kind of Americana Folk. I like a lot of electronic music too so it has a little element of that in there. But, I think emotional folk rock is pretty accurate. I've never said that one before, but I feel like that's pretty close. I really like singing about my feelings. Which I guess that's what songs are. But, I like trying to get as intimate as I can with a song. I just really feel like a song can be so helpful to somebody who maybe doesn't have the relationships they need to be able to express the right emotions that they need to and I think songs can do that for people. So, I feel like if you're not trying hard to do that to some capacity, it doesn't matter what the emotion is specifically. But, that's really the goal, I just want to help people who don't have those resources from their family or their friends to understand themselves better. If I can express to people what I've experienced, maybe it will help them understand more about what they've experienced.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What are some of your creative goals with your solo career?
[NOAH]: I really want to make another EP this year. I am planning on moving to New York in the fall. So, I want to challenge myself to learn how to make music outside of my house. I do writing and stuff with people, but all the music I've put out is music I've made by myself in my house. So, the challenge of stepping outside of that comfort zone and going out and making songs with people in a space where I feel as safe and at home is something I'm kind of scared of. So, that's a big goal of mine. Another big goal, I want to play some shows completely solo this year. That's another thing that I've never done and I think if I could play a show completely by myself with just me and an instrument or two, it will change me. I know it in my heart. So, that's another big goal for sure.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Do you have a favorite show or location from the tour you went on?
[NOAH]: It was in Exeter, New Hampshire and it's called the Word Barn. It was this super cool little barn on somebody's property. This family had turned the barn into a venue and it was just a little room, probably like 30 or 40 feet wide. They had chairs all set up and the house was built in the 1700s and they sold local honey and had this super cool merch and stuff. They got us food, like homemade and so sustainable. So yeah, that was probably my favorite one.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Outside of music, what are some of your interests?
[NOAH]: I sell a lot of clothes and I'm pretty into fashion vintage. I kind of got really into that during the pandemic when music shut down. So, that's been something I've been really into, just clothes and fashion. I love camping a lot, I do a lot of hiking and camping. I used to be really into drawing and graphic design stuff, I kind of got out of that. But, I still do a little bit. I design my merch and stuff. That was the first stuff I've done in a long time and I was like, "Oh, it's so nice." I can just throw on a podcast or an album and just completely get lost in the lines on a sheet of paper, which is great. So, that was really a nice thing and I kind of want to get back into that. I like a lot of outdoor stuff. I was obsessed with scootering for a long time when I was in high school. And photography, too. I don't do it as much anymore but I got really obsessed with film and taking pictures. But yeah, and cooking. I love cooking. Big cooking guy.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What have you been listening to lately? What’s on your radar?
[NOAH]: I have been listening to the new Clairo record that she just put out that's like the live performance record. That record is epic. I've been listening to the new Daft Punk Random Access Memories 10th-anniversary album that they just put out. That album's really sick. Figure 8 by Elliott Smith. That record is so sick. I've just started listening to The Cure.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What does the future look like for you? What are your next steps?
[NOAH]: Well, after this release, I'm planning on putting out one or two more songs this summer and then an EP in the fall. And just playing a few shows, I would love to tour in the fall and have a few potential tours that are in the works. So, those are kind of the next steps. But, I'm really excited to just be home a lot this summer and record and record and record. So yeah, those are the next steps that hopefully will take place.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Anything else you would like for people to know about you?
[NOAH]: I would love for them to know that they're always welcome to message me or hit me up if they have any questions. I'm always honored to talk to anyone about literally anything, music or not music related.
