Artist Interview – Caroline Romano

Caroline Romano is a Nashville-based artist ready to share her voice with the world. Releasing her first single at 15, the now twenty-something is just as honest and vulnerable as ever. Starting off 2022 with the release of her debut album, Romano is not letting her foot off the gas. Continue reading to hear about her writing process, what it means to be “the loudest sort of introvert”, and the plans she has for the rest of the year.

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Your debut album, Oddities and Prodigies, was released earlier this year. What are some of the things you’ve learned throughout the creation of this album?

I think one of the biggest things I learned from the process of creating Oddities and Prodigies was just how important writing a start-to-finish story is to me. I’d only ever released singles before the album, but I found so much expression and release in being able to tell one story through 16 whole songs. That was a really cool thing to learn. In a lot of ways, writing the album brought me back to myself and the reason I make music in the first place. It’s so easy to get caught up in the race of “making it”, but just fulfilling my childhood dream of creating an album put a lot of things in perspective for me.

When you sit down to write music, what does that process look like?

The process of writing a song looks a little different each time it happens, but if I’m writing alone, it often starts from a poem or a feeling I need to write down somewhere. When I write by myself, I like to get all of the words out on paper first, then I’ll go back and find the melody to them. If I’m writing in a studio with other people, I’ll often try to come in with a line or a feeling I want to write about, and we throw around melodies or lyrics surrounding that. Sometimes I write to track. Other times, I’ll sit down and purposefully try to write a song that sounds a certain way. It’s a slightly different story each time, and that’s why I love it so much.

Is there a song you wrote for the album that has had a profound impact on you?

“Leaving Wednesday” is the song I’m most proud of so far in my career. It’s been my life-defining song from the album. I think in many ways, that song is the album in under 3 minutes. I wrote “Leaving Wednesday” on the floor of my childhood bedroom during the pandemic. It was right before I was about to move back to Nashville and start life again. I don’t know what made me write that song, or why I decided to leave town on a Wednesday, but it’s definitely the one I feel the most connected to.

You’ve described yourself as ‘the loudest sort of introvert’. Elaborate on that.

I say I’m the “loudest sort of introvert” because I haven’t really found another way of putting it. I truly think I am an introvert through and through. But there’s this part of me, the part of me that does music, that wants to be the loudest, most impactful thing I could possibly be. I want to spill my guts on a stage to as many people as possible, but I have trouble ordering from a restaurant without stumbling over my words. I have so much to say, but I only ever say it if I’m screaming it into a microphone. There’s really no middle to those parts of me. I’m an emotional extremist in every sense of the word.

Recently, you released two alternative versions of your song ‘Hollister’. What inspired these alternate releases?

I wanted “Hollister” to have a chance to be a single. I originally just put it out as an album cut with the rest of Oddities and Prodigies, but I thought it would be cool to give it a chance at another life. “Hollister”‘s lyrics aren’t necessarily happy, but the upbeat take on the original track kind of masks that. I wanted to lean into the sadness of the song a bit more, as I was sad when I wrote it. I’m really proud of the alternative version, and I’m glad the song has gotten to live these 2 different lives in a way.

If you could choose anyone to collaborate with, who would it be and why?

This is tough, as there are so many artists I would die to collaborate with at the moment. I’d say Noah Kahan, Taylor Swift, and Holly Humberstone are my big 3. They are some of my favorite storytellers of all time, and they’ve each found a way to knit their own uniqueness into everything they make. There’s nobody you can really compare them to, and I love that. They’ve each impacted me in tremendous ways with their music, and it’s definitely a dream of mine to one day collaborate with each of them.

You started 2022 off with a bang. Now that we’re halfway through, what do you have lined up for the rest of the year?

There’s going to be a lot of new music. Putting out an album was the biggest thing I’d done in my career up to this point, but I’m already working on the next one. I’ve got the next single lined up for the fall. It’s time for the next chapter. I’m hoping to play a lot more shows this year. I already have some lined up for later this summer. There’s going to just be a lot more music in 2022.