Raised on the soulful storytelling of her home county’s country scene and the gritty emotional stylings of the 90s rock that once dominated radio stations, Nashville-based Taylor Acorn has spent the last few years forging a uniquely hybrid sound.
Driven by melody and a desire for catharsis, from starting out in the country scene through her evolution into a pop-punk artist, a throughline of candidness has bound everything the 30-year-old creates. Opening up about her most intimate of experiences with love, life, and navigating difficult emotions, Taylor has taken her audience on a guided tour through the highest highs and lowest lows of her life.
Her journey arriving at its latest stop with her long-awaited debut album, ‘Survival In Motion’ is a statement on the power of overcoming against all odds. A collection of tracks marked by their hopefulness and determination, we sat down with Taylor to talk about how it came to life, the relationship between pop-punk and country, and the importance of realising that it’s okay to be okay.
ROCK SOUND: It’s been a long lead up to the moment where you could finally say ‘I’m putting out a debut album’, why did you decide that now was the right time?
TAYLOR ACORN: “When we started writing the album, it wasn’t planned. I had no intention of putting out an album, and I didn’t know where I would be sitting in my career. As an independent artist, an album is an expensive thing to do. I went into the writing session expecting to come out with a handful of songs and maybe put out an EP, but the songs kept flowing. We started in the first week of January, and soon we had a collection of songs that fit so well together. My producer, Dan Swank, put the songs in a line on his computer, and he was joking around saying that it was the album. I was looking at it, and I realised that he was right. It was very organic.”
RS: Melody is such a huge part of this album. Every song is an earworm, and each track has its own moment to shine with zero filler. Have you always loved artists who had a strong grasp of melody?
TAYLOR: “For sure, and I think that’s why I am so drawn to a lot of late 90s and early 2000s music. Those songs are so melody driven, especially when you look at bands like The Goo Goo Dolls. No person is ever going to forget the melody of ‘Iris’, and those bands have such a way of writing songs that get stuck in your head. A lot of people might find that annoying, but those are the songs that I always go back to. They sit with you, and they make you feel good. I’ve inherited that, and I love that feeling of being able to listen to something repeatedly and never get sick of it.”
RS: Having spent a lot of time in Nashville, a place with an extensive music history, how much of an impact has the city had on your sound and inspiration?
TAYLOR: “When I started my career a few years ago, I was making country music. I love the storytelling of country music, and when I started to shift into a pop-punk sound, a little bit of that bled into the songs. There will be people online who will be confused about whether I make country or pop-punk, and I love that. It makes me feel like I’m doing something a little differently. Seeing these artists that have been around for years and getting to meet people in the genre has been a great learning process for me. There are so many artists who left the pop-punk genre to become a country artist or vice versa, and one who I really love is Mitchell Tenpenny. He and I were having a conversation, and he was telling me that he grew up touring with Paramore. There’s such an influence of pop-punk, metal, and rock in the country scene.”
RS: In terms of the album title, talk us through the story of how ‘Survival In Motion’ came about…
TAYLOR: “I was with my best friend Emma White, who wrote all of ‘Survival In Motion’ with me. We hang out a lot, and one time when she was over, we were bored. It was right before the new year, and it had just snowed in Nashville. A lot of things were shut down, and no one was really doing anything. We have a Books-A-Million store where I live, and sometimes I go in there to look at books, read poetry, and get ideas. We went over there that day, and I grabbed a book. I looked at the cover, and the concept was the same as the cover art for my single ‘Basement’. In that image, I’m falling through a desolate void, and the colour scheme is yellows and oranges. This book had a girl falling through another desolate void, and I was amazed. I opened the book, and the poem that I landed on said, ‘We are all walking representations of survival in motion’.
Whether it’s dealing with loss, love, life, anxiety, or depression… There are so many things that we go through as humans. At the end of the day though, we keep going, no matter how hard it is. No matter how much it feels like it breaks you, you keep going. That sentence was such a representation of my life, especially the last five years.
Five years ago, when the pandemic was happening, I was quitting music. I didn’t want to do it anymore, and I had started taking real estate courses and trying to find a Plan B. I had gotten to the last five hours of my course, and I sat there like, ‘I don’t want to take these tests, I want to make music’. That’s what I love to do, and it’s what drives me. I started doing covers on TikTok, and I dove into the music that has fed me throughout my entire life. It’s crazy to see how much has changed since then, especially when it comes to my mental health and my struggles. I’ve overcome so much, and this is a new side of me that I don’t think my listeners have heard before. I’m happier, and I’ve grown a lot.”
RS: These songs are incredibly personal and draw upon some vulnerable moments and feelings. You acknowledge how bad things can get, but you also emphasise that there’s a way out of that, and that it can get better…
TAYLOR: “Throughout the years, I’ve written a lot of songs that cut deep and talk about my struggles. Now, that’s just not where I am in my life. Obviously, I still have days where I’m struggling, but there have been so many times in my life where I wish that I’d had someone telling me it would be okay. It’s okay to want to get out of that rut and to want to feel better. I’m so used to writing music that talks about my mental health because that was the person I was for so long. Now, it’s important for me to say, ‘I got out of this, and it’s going to be okay’. It’s hard, and it’s a struggle, but it’s so good on the other side. When I was younger, I wish I had an artist with that message. It’s reassuring to know that someone understands what you’re going through, but I never had anyone telling me that I could get out of it. I want to put that message out there, and I hope that somebody listens to it during their healing journey and realises that it’s okay. It’s okay to not be stuck in that place, and it’s okay to want to heal.”
RS: It can become a vicious cycle. Sometimes you listen to sad songs because you’re sad, and then there’s no motivation to stop being sad because those feelings are somewhat validated…
TAYLOR: “Exactly. It’s okay to grow, and it’s okay to feel happy. No one wants to go back to that place, but I still have days where I wake up and I struggle. That’s part of life, but this feels like a new chapter. There’s a lot of positivity in this album, and I hope that people will embrace that. With everything that’s been going on, I want to push positivity. I want people to feel good, and I want people to feel happy, because we’re in a time right now that’s scary. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but if I can give people a little bit of light, that’s all that matters to me.”
RS: When we’re talking about these ideas, it feels important to mention ‘Greener’. Could you tell us a little more about the meaning behind that track and how it came about?
TAYLOR: “That song is probably the most important song I’ve ever written. I always go to it whenever I need a little pick me up. I love when listeners can take a song and put their own perspective on it, but I wrote that song about my battles with depression and anxiety. My dad passed away when I was young, and I couldn’t process those emotions as a kid. As an adult, you start processing things, and that was one of my biggest struggles. This song is about letting go of the darkness that I was feeling and letting go of how trapped I felt in my own mind. I had to allow my mind to want to heal and allow it to want to see the light. Once I started doing that and started allowing myself to feel good, that’s when everything started to change. Whenever I listen to it, it makes me feel emotional, because I never thought that I would get there. I’m finally in a place where I feel happy, and it’s about taking a chance on the potential of something better.”
RS: Growing up in a small town, did you ever anticipate you’d be in a position where people look to your music for meaning, and that your art would play an important role in other’s lives?
TAYLOR: “Absolutely not. I came from such a small town, and people don’t chase the things that I’ve been chasing. Seeing how far I’ve come is strange, but when I started writing music, I was just writing for myself. I had no intentions of becoming an artist, and I had no intentions of starting a career in music. It was something that I always loved, and I was passionate about, but I had no idea that any of this would happen. Knowing that people care now, it makes me feel a lot less alone. There have been times where I’d play three hour shows in bars and diners, and I had no idea that anybody was listening. I felt that way for a long time, but now I can see that people resonate with the things that I’ve been saying. It’s amazing to hear stories and have people feel like they trust me with what I say. The music I make is my diary, and I just so happen to be putting it out into the world.”
RS: With the debut album ready to go, what does the future look like for this project now?
TAYLOR: “I was going to quit music, so to be playing these songs live and sharing them with people is amazing. Being able to do this every day and to meet people who have experienced similar things to me is all that really matters, and I have no expectations of where all of this is going to end up. I’m doing everything that I’ve always wanted to do, and if this is what I get to do for the rest of my life, I’m so happy with that. If it never changes, or it doesn’t grow, this is still everything that I’ve ever wanted. I thought that I was going to be working in real estate or moving back in with my mom by now, but I’m living the dream.”