Lucy Dacus says she could sing before she could speak.
“I always wrote songs,” explains the 22-year-old singer-songwriter from Richmond, Virginia.
“Elementary school, middle school.
Credit: MATADOR RECORDS
It didn’t feel more creative than speaking.
It was just normal to do that.”
(“I just thought she was the coolest lady I ever saw,” Dacus quips.)
“I would bring in a song, Jacob would be doing arrangements, and Collin would be recording.
Their synergy glistens on Dacus' sophomore record,Historian, out today.
But lyricism remains central to her craft.
“My favorite music is when the sound is supplementing the message,” she says.
“I don’t think it’s dramatic; it’s cinematic.”
When did you begin working onHistorian?LUCY DACUS:Some of the songs are older thanNo Burdensongs.
I think we got it right this time.
I had never recorded before.
I had never been in a studio.
I’d never had to talk to anybody about my music or music in general.
I’d never taken music classes, never been to music school.
I really wanted horns, but we didn’t have the budget or the time for horns.
I didn’t even have a distortion pedal at the time.
It was just a failure on my part to communicate effectively what the song needed.
I actually finished the track listing before I finished the songs themselves.
I thought the sequencing of the record was the most intuitive, obvious piece of the puzzle.
Can you tell me lyrical themes?I end up writing about hope in every song.
I think writing this will help me stay that key in of person.
The album isn’t easy.
Because you have to do it.
It’s impossible to avoid.
Did you have any new goals on this album?I wanted to make something that felt urgent.
So I personally feel this urgency to say the thing I would want to say as soon as possible.
I think that’s this album.
But it’s not urgent in the same way that this album is.
I wrote it in reaction to the Baltimore uprising, but it isn’t specifically about that.
It’s about the decision to march and protest and participate.
So many people were telling me, “It’s dangerous, don’t go there.”
There are so many reasons to not protest, and honestly a lot of them are valid.
I think of that as the centerpiece of the album.
To me, it’s almost like the outlier.That’s why.
It is kind of the outlier.
[Tracks] one through four and five through eight kind of close in on each other.
One and nine speak to each other.
Two and eight speak to each other.
It doesn’t really have a partner.
It’s its own entity.
I think some artists care more about that creative streak than their literal lives.
Like “Night Shift”?Yeah.
I admit that the intensity of this is going to fade.”
Breakup songs are generally sad, but I am so not sad for my breakup.
[Laughs] Every breakup is preceded by a bad relationship.
So breakups should be cause for celebration and triumph.
you’re free to’t be texting when you’re onstage at 10 p.m.That’s my night shift.
That’s when I’m at work.
Is it ever hard to recreate that?
Does the song ever lose its meaning to you?No.
It always means something.
Occasionally it hits too hard!
