From a young age, your parents can usually pick up on what interests their kids and what doesn’t. Oftentimes, they’ll encourage you to find your voice, or find something you love and stick with it. That is exactly what Chelsea Cutler’s parents did for her.
Born with natural talent and a passion for music.
Chelsea Cutler grew up learning music from a young age. Like most, her talent was natural from the start. She says, “My parents had me in piano and guitar lessons super young, and they always encouraged our creative inclinations, so I got started pretty young.” Just like anyone growing up, you tend to find your own passions and things you enjoy as time goes on. For Cutler, music was always there, but she also enjoyed playing soccer too. While attending college, she started to take music more seriously and work on becoming a singer, songwriter and producer. In 2017 she signed with Ultra Records, she then left school for her first tour supporting Quinn XCII in his national tour.
Her music is very unique and different. “I think it has a lot of organic indie elements and a lot of pop elements to it too. Lyrically, it’s pretty honest and representative of my life,” she says. Writing music that is as honest as hers takes a lot of courage because, in a way, you are opening up and letting everyone who listens get a glimpse of that almost hidden part of your life. Her lyrism and the way she manipulates words to be able to flow together perfectly takes talent and she does it flawlessly.
Sharing such personal lyrics can sometimes be a challenge.
When it comes to being so honest and creating music with very open and genuine lyrics, Cutler has to prepare herself for the initial response from the people in her life. Writing such vulnerable music can be hard but also easy at the same time. There is always a small fear of how people will react.
“The easiest part is that I am writing from experience, so it comes quickly and naturally. The hardest part is sharing that vulnerability with people. I definitely get scared for my loved ones and my friends to hear my lyrics,” Cutler says. Songwriting is easiest when you can write based on your own life and things you go through and that is how Cutler creates her music. “It [songwriting] definitely all comes from my own personal experiences.”
If you take a moment to listen to any of the music she has released, you’re able to clearly tell she puts every emotion she has felt into all her music and that is what makes her songs real and true to who she is.
2017 was a big year for Cutler, she released her first single titled, “Your Shirt” The track has since reached more than 50 million streams on Spotify and also earned a high place on SoundCloud’s Pop Chart. The same year, she released her debut EP “Snow in October”. 2017 was really the year Cutler kicked off her career in the industry. Following an epic first year, came 2018 where she released a collection of self-produced work, her independent mixtape called “Sleeping With Roses”. Soon after its release, she announced her first headlining tour which included 18 major cities across the U.S. and sold out within the first week of tickets going on sale. In May of 2019, she got together with singer-songwriter Jeremy Zucker and together they put out an EP titled, “Brent (Live in New York)”. The five-track EP includes a standout single, “You Were Good To Me”. As far as collaborations go, Cutler noted that this is her favorite so far. “My favorite collaboration so far has to be the “Brent” EP I did with Jeremy Zucker.” As far as who she’d like to work with in the future, she says, her dream collab is the country duo, Dan + Shay.
Flash forward to 2020, Chelsea released her first debut album, How to Be Human which landed at number 23 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart. The 15-track record is full of songs that tell one big story. “I probably wrote 25 or so [songs for How to Be Human]. I think I only really even presented 18-20 of those to my management and label. I just chose the songs that felt the most powerful to me and the ones that best told a cohesive story.”
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