It's been a little over a year since my debut album Nightgown was released publically. I wanted to talk about that process!
posted: August 16, 2026
updated: n/a
Hey all. It’s been a little over a year since I released Nightgown, and I wanted to share a little bit more of the behind the scenes of the story behind making this album with you. This album was truly one of those things where it went through so many forms and eras over the 5 years it was in production. Let’s start at the beginning.
I have mentioned at one point that I started writing the album on July 25th, 2020. That I sat down at my piano and wrote about 10 songs, 5 of those making it onto the final record. Here’s that story-
I was living in Needham at the time. I was showering late at night when the song Nightgown came to me. The chorus specifically. I knew immediately that this song had to become an album. I got out and got ready, shared the song with my mom, then went up to my room and wrote lots more. I wrote Nightgown, If It’s War, Lilly, The Plane, and Eternal Summer. I also wrote a few others. Some of the songs that didn’t make the cut were called Ghosts (tied to The Plane), Grocery Store (tied to Black Widow), and Bug Bites. I also planned to include a song written back in May 2020, Game Of Chess. Ultimately most of the cut songs were cut because the things they said were said in better ways (or said more impactfully, more concisely, more boldly, etc) elsewhere. I also cut a lot of songs that gave me an enormous amount of petty, personal satisfaction but added nothing to the album or actively detracted from it (sorry Handmade Enemies! Miss you bby!).
The rest was history. I wrote so many songs for this album over the 5 years this album patiently waited for me to be ready. Many are lost to time. Some I only remember the titles of. At one point I thought I would do a double album because of how many songs there were. The concept of the second was going to be built around the line “eternal summer’s come and gone”. I ended up deciding to just cut it into a really concise single album. Many of these songs live on in other forms. For instance, I had a song that referenced scrubbing myself clean of the person, a line that later made its way into Black Widow instead.
At one point, I had a meeting with a potential distributor. After leaving my old management in March 2020, I wanted to find an option with more creative control. This was the first real pushback I faced to the idea of an album. He was unwilling to work with me if I was making this an album, I was unwilling to tell this story outside of that format. I have faced a lot of pushback to being an album artist since, but it is part of who I am. I love the album art form. World building, extended metaphors, songs relating to each other and adding to each other’s stories. So I pushed ahead.
I recorded two album songs in 2022. Queen of Hell and Lilly. Queen of Hell ended up being re-recorded in the final studio sessions, Lilly is the way I recorded it all the way back then with the exception of some new backing vocals. I will always thank Brad, my producer, for his patience because he allowed this album time to go through all its iterations, all the insane 3am songs that should never see the light of day, all the Nightgowns that led to the Nightgown you now have. It took until 2024 to be sure I had the Nightgown I wanted, and I’m so glad I waited and let it become what it became. Actually, it took until 2024 to even have all the songs that made it. Chains was the most recent song that made it, and it was written in March 2024. The rest were 2022 or before. Chains was the final piece, the moment that brought the album together for me and made it unquestionably about abuse. I knew I had my album. Chains was the key to understanding the album.
I now had two halves. I consider the first half to be from the perspective of the person still there, still making sense of something happening right now. Many of those songs were written in July, mere months after leaving. It was easy to put myself back there. The second half was meant to be more detached, seeing things more clearly with distance. Explicitly naming it as abuse when that idea can be terrifying to someone in the situation. Explicitly interrogating the patterns that led to what happened. Interrogating everything you believed about the world because of it. Now of course, this is just my interpretation of my album. You may see this album totally differently based on your experience, and I welcome that! Every story is different.
One thing that was also really important to me in this narrative was to not avoid details that made me look bad. Specifically in songs like Black Widow where I accept and am a participant in the dynamic and songs like If It’s War and Queen Of Hell where I am unmistakably angry and have violent feelings. The “perfect victim” narrative has always been something I deeply despised, so whenever I thought “that line makes me look bad, let’s remove it” I instead made myself keep it. I wanted to present this in a way that was unsanitized and imperfect. I wanted to present a messy narrator who still did not deserve abuse. I wanted to show a real person with real complications and reasons for staying.
By 2022, my music had changed drastically. I had a new sound I was working on that was intended for a new album (one I’m in process of writing right now). 2022 was really a breaking point in that sense, I was no longer writing like I was writing for Nightgown. And yet Chains still came out of it.
The main recording sessions for Nightgown were in 2024 and 2025. In August of 2024 I flew back up to Needham to work Brad. We did Black Widow, If It’s War, Nightgown, The Plane, Fucked Up, and the new Queen Of Hell. In May of 2025 I came back and we finished the rest. We did any necessary adjustments to the other songs and got Like He Taught Me, Chains, and Eternal Summer done. I saved these for last because I knew they would be emotionally hardest for me. Chains is the one and only time I have ever cried in the studio, and the take I started crying after was the one we used. I actually still can't listen to Chains most of the time. When I do listen to Nightgown, that's usually the one I skip.
Let me tell you as well, these songs were under scrutiny up until the minute I got the master recordings back. I literally wrote the break down on If It’s War (the section that goes “I’ve never been good at guessing your moods”) ON THE PLANE TO BOSTON TO RECORD IT. Of course, these songs didn’t change MUCH from their original versions, but there were many small tweaks.
I actually vividly remember listening to The Plane as I boarded the plane back to Richmond after the first round of recording and really feeling this album was happening for the first time. My recording flights were spent listening to Nightgown and picking it apart. Since then, I almost always listen to this album on plane rides.
I had a really hard time choosing singles. I knew I wanted the single progression (Queen Of Hell -> Lilly -> Fucked Up -> Chains) to mirror the album narrative because this album is explicitly narrative and it is a chronological story. That said, this album felt so weird to pick and choose from because of the subject matter. How do you choose which evidence should precede and give the first version of the story? I chose these songs, but I never felt right about the idea of singles for this one.
I knew I wanted to release this album on July 11, so it was cutting it very close. I choose my dates well in advance and with intention. Not always thematic intention, but intention. 6/6 for Chains cause of the devil imagery, 11/8 for Queen Of Hell cause it’s the day after my birthday, 4/18 for Fucked Up cause it’s the day before my dads birthday and Fucked Up is his favorite song, etc. I wanted July 11. I had already started releasing singles, already announced the album date. I was actually legitimately relieved that it worked out what with CDBaby needing so much time to process and distribute songs.
Then there's the album cover, a picture of me and a candle. These were taken in May 2025. REALLY cutting it close lol. Actually the story behind these is kind of funny. I'd gone back and forth on the vision for this. For the longest time, in my head the album was represented by an image of me in the dead of the night. i would be behind a fire pit kneeling in the snow. Then I got to talking to Patty Duffey, the person who helped make this album's visual identity what it is, about my concept. We floated a few things around and ended up with the concept that you see. I took the photos late at night. I took a test round, asked a bunch of people which vibes they liked more. Used that and my own judgement to decide more fully. I actually ended up really liking one of them, but I was wearing a hideous green shirt that was VERY MUCH not Nightgown. So I did the actual photoshoot. It was very hodgepodge. I wasn't able to get a candleholder in time. I lit the candle, melted the wax a bit, and used the wax to stick the candle to a mirror. Almost burned myself twice when the candle inevitably fell. But I got a bunch of fun photos.
The court theme actually came about when I was making the website for it. I decided to get theatrical with it, really lean into the worldbuilding. I figured what better setting for this album than a court, a place where so many like me struggle to be believed. Why not lean into the cold and clinical way society sees cases like mine. But why not flip it on its head, treat the album as evidence. Present images from that time in my life where I was living and writing this album as my “proof”. Subvert expectations by explicitly building my own case and believing myself.
And now the album is in your hands. You get the jury seat.
This album has not generated much attention, that's intentional. I did not promote it really, did not make it a big deal, because that felt wrong with an album of this nature. It felt like saying "Hey guys! Wow look at me! *here's my trauma*" lol. But it's there, it exists, and it's real. And that's what I wanted it to be.
Thank you for bearing witness.