Hannah Cole

It's not the typical aim for a young Nashville singer-songwriter raised on her mom's country albums, the jazz culture of New Orleans, and her sister's love of Paramore to wrap her arms around The Breeders' classic album for her debut. Therein lies the draw of Hannah Cole.

Switchbacks is the new LP (Tight Knit Records) that folds in the shoegaze and alt-rock sounds of the mid-nineties with Cole's love of pop hooks and a dreamy atmosphere. The result is an arresting debut that had us wanting to find out more about where the influences come from and how she landed on being an artist in the first place.

Analogue: I read that you moved to Nashville in 2019 for music business. Was that a Belmont thing?

Hannah Cole: Yeah, so I studied songwriting and music business.

Analogue: That's an investment on your part to move to Music City and make the dream happen. What were you picturing then versus what you're living now? Or maybe you weren't picturing anything.

Hannah: That's a great question. Growing up, I didn't really even know that you could make a career out of songwriting. I knew that obviously songs had to come from somewhere. I guess I just thought, ‘Oh, all artists write their own songs.’ And that's how it is. And then the older I got, I realized that that wasn't the case.

And a friend mentioned Belmont to me when she was touring colleges, and she was like, ‘Oh, there's actually a music business program. I know you do music; that might be something you're interested in.’ So I was like, ‘Okay, I'll check it out.’ And when I toured the school, I saw that there was a songwriting program. And I was like, ‘Oh, well, I do that too. That could be cool.’

But I still knew that I had some sort of musical talent, and I thought I would use it in some way. But I didn't really envision myself being the artist. I think I went into school being like, ‘Oh, I'm going to be the songwriter behind the scenes, writing for other artists.’ And then the more I went to class and showed my teachers and my other classmates my songs, it became clear to me that what I write is not only really personal, but it also seems to resonate with a lot of people. And I think the mixture of having pretty unique and personal perspectives for myself, and having that resonate with my classmates, made me realize that an artist route is probably the way to go.

It wasn't until we all got sent home for COVID. And I was like, ‘Okay, I might as well start.’ I dabbled in demo production and stuff like that. But that was the first time that my producer and partner, Josef, and I actually worked on my first song remotely. We recorded things separately, and we were sending each other things, and I got to experiment with that and put out a song and see the response. And I was like, ‘Oh, this is awesome. I'm just gonna keep doing this.’ Here I am now.

Analogue: What's the soundtrack to childhood? What's fueling your earliest musical interest there?

Hannah: Honestly, I tell people I don't come from a very musical family at all. My parents listened to music, but they mostly just threw on the radio. My mom had a lot of country CDs growing up. I'm trying to think… definitely The Chicks were on. I also grew up right outside of New Orleans, so jazz was a huge thing. But then my older sisters were into Paramore and all of that. So I had a really wide range of music being fed to me growing up. [Laughs]

A lot of stuff I found actually was through my piano teacher. I started playing piano when I was about six years old, and I absolutely hated it. I hated it so much. I hated being told what I had to play. That was a big thing. One of my flaws is that I'm really bad at doing things for the first time, things that I'm not good at. It's hard for me to get into it if I'm not a natural. I had a love for music, but I really wanted to have freedom. I really wanted to be creative, and I felt like when my teacher would come over, and she'd be like, ‘This is what you have to play. This is the sheet music. You have to learn this. You have to play this. This is how it's done.’ I was just like, ‘No, I'm not going to do that.’

Eventually she was like, ‘You know what? There's something here. There’s potential here.’ And then I started to sing, and I think she put two and two together and was like, ‘Okay, I need to teach you songs that you want to play, songs that are on the radio, songs that are classics. And you can sing, and I'm going to teach you chords.’ So she taught me how to play chords. I played the most random—anything from Green Day to Aerosmith, Taylor Swift; there's a lot going on. Patsy Cline, I think, was the first song I sang in front of people—“Crazy" by Patsy Cline at a recital. So, so much music. There wasn't a clear genre growing up, but I would say everything was probably pretty different from what I'm making right now.

Analogue: That's really interesting to me. On the new album, there's this clear ‘90s pocket that it sits in. I grew up with all of that, but clearly you didn’t, so I’m wondering where in the world this comes from?

Hannah: Yeah. It probably wasn't until I was in college that I really started diving deep into a lot of underground stuff—current music as well, but especially music from the '90s, like the Breeders, the Sundays. I love Juliana Hatfield. I didn't have a streaming service growing up. I didn't have Apple Music or Spotify or anything until late high school, maybe right before I went to college. And when I tell people that, they're like, ‘That is crazy. What were you listening to?’

And I think now it's really important for me to listen before I speak and listen to a lot of older music, especially right now where so many people are trying to make a career out of music. So many people are very creative and want to do music as a career. And I think what sets certain people apart, at least I've noticed, is when they can take something that was done in the past and try to make it their own and push it forward in their own way.

Analogue: It makes me wonder if you were surprised that you landed on that as what you were putting out. When you take the whole thing in, is that surprising to you even now? Or when you were listening to those artists, were you like, ‘Yes, I have found it’?

Hannah: Yeah. I think it was kind of the mission early on to draw from that. I was really inspired by bands from that era that I thought were ahead of their time. When I think back to an album like Last Splash by the Breeders, I'm like, ‘Okay, I want to make my version of that album if I made it and it was today.’ So I hope that that makes sense. I don't ever want to straight up copy another band, but I think just taking inspiration from whether it's a snare sound or a weird little bell element or something production-wise. And I also just wanted the overall production or sonic landscape on my record to be this kind of dreamy, memory-like thing. So, yeah.

Analogue: You mentioned the glut of everyone making music now, that there's so much out there. What’s your relationship with that part of it?

Hannah: Yeah. I think that it's really easy to get down on yourself. There will always be people doing “better” than you and “worse”. And I say "worse" in quotes, because I really don't think that in the music industry there's a first place trophy. There's not this one end goal that you need to meet in order to be successful or in order to be considered a “real artist”. I have people that when I told them I signed with a label for this record, they're like, ‘Oh my gosh, that's the craziest thing on earth!’ And then I could tell some family members that, or some other people, and they're still like, ‘Oh, so what else do you do though? Or what is your other plan?’ [Laughs]

Sometimes it's really easy for me to see so many people doing so many things that I feel like, ‘Oh, I deserve that.’ I can feel down on myself or insecure, but then there are also other times where I look around, and I'm like, ‘Wow, I'm so lucky that I was able to make a whole record and I get to have vinyl and these things.’ I just see myself as very lucky to be able to do even that, and I think that through the process of making this record and being able to put it out and do things like this—to have interviews where I can talk about and explain the process.

The beginning of making the record, my mindset looked a lot differently than it does now, and

I think you can hear that through the story of the record. In the beginning, it's this huge mountain to climb. You're standing before this really huge thing. How am I going to even… do I have to act as if I've already made it for people to think that I am worth listening to? There are so many questions constantly swirling in my mind. But when I look back and see what I've made, I feel really confident in the music right now.

I think I'm kind of at this place where people talk about numbers and playlists and all this stuff. Oh, this person got on this playlist, and maybe you didn't get on this one or whatever. And I just think that I'm at a place now where none of that truly matters to me. Personally, I'm so confident in the music and proud of what I made that that is like the best feeling ever.

Analogue: That feels really healthy. I know you’ve got live plans coming up. How are you feeling about taking these songs on the road?

Hannah: I feel so excited. I really am so excited. Obviously, I'm nervous. I always get stage fright. I'm a pretty nervous person in general, but I feel a high level of confidence with these songs in particular, just because I like them so much. I've practiced them a couple times already and ran through the set a little bit, and just being able to play songs that I had so much fun making and so much fun writing. I'm excited for people to experience that joy that I experienced, even if not every song is the most joyful thing ever. I think people will be able to feel how it made me feel when making it. So I'm excited.

VISIT: Hannah Cole