Ones2Watch Home

Photo by Luke Rogers

It’s been six years since Gatlin’s debut single and now her debut album is here. A lot has changed for Gatlin over the years. When she first started releasing music, she thought she was straight and was writing about her heartbreaks at the hands of men. Now, she’s come to terms with her identity and is proud to put her queerness on full display. It certainly wasn’t an easy journey to get to where she is now, and that’s what her debut album, The Eldest Daughter, dives into. Gatlin took the time to join us via Zoom to talk all about The Eldest Daughter, her album release show, and returning to Florida to film the visuals for the album. 

OnesToWatch: Debut album! Huge! Congratulations! How does that feel? It’s such a big accomplishment, so many years of work. How do you feel now that it’s going to be out in the world so soon?

Gatlin: I just feel really ready and excited. I’ve been working on these songs for a long time. Albums take a long time and I definitely took my time because it’s a really heavy topic. I took a long time making it and I am just ready for it to be out. Plus I’ve been making music for six years so I’m like “Finally! An album!” This is something that I can really be like this is a piece of work. It feels like a long time coming. 

And it’s so exciting for fans too. I’m sure they’re equally as excited.

Yeah! I had my album release show last night in LA. There were fans there and getting to talk to them and to hear how proud they were of me, it’s a good feeling.

I wanted to ask you about that show. What was it like playing the album top to bottom for the first time in front of a crowd?

It just felt complete. I also was like “Woah, this is long!” I’m not used to that with a bunch of EPs and singles. I was like “This is a lot of time and songs!” It felt cool, also, playing it down in those moments. In rehearsal I’m thinking about so many different things so when I was playing the show I was actually feeling each song. It just felt special, it felt really, really special to have everyone there listening to it.

You mentioned it’s a heavy album, some of the moments you touch on. The last single you released, “Soho House Valet,” is definitely one of those. It’s also a beautiful song and you called it your “north star song” when creating the album, can you expand on that idea? Because I love that phrasing and that concept.

I say north star, it was the first song that I wrote that, I was in a weird place in my career, with my music. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep going. It’s a hard industry to be in. There’s a lot of no’s and there’s a lot of fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting. I was in a down place and I was going through a lot of different things so I wrote the song kind of just for me. In the past I’ve been like “Okay what am I feeling and also what do I think the fans would like?” Kind of viewing it more as an interactive thing and this one I just wrote thinking “This will never see the light of day. I’m just writing it for me.” And then the vulnerability and pieces of me that came out through that, months later when I was looking at it I was like “Ok this is what I want the album to be like. I want it to be this level of honesty and vulnerability and pieces of me in each song of the album.” It was the first song and what I wanted to chase, chasing telling my story of all the ugly stuff, of how ugly, beautiful, all the things of how I became who I am.

That’s something that I really respect about musicians, the vulnerability. It’s something that I couldn’t do but sometimes that’s what turns into the core of the project so I’m always really interested to hear that and I really respect that vulnerability that artists have. 

Thank you! I feel like before, with a lot of music from my past, I’ve had moments of that. But mostly it’s been about my breakups, or relationships. I've been vulnerable in that way but for me it was a lot harder to talk about my shit and my childhood shit. I guess it was a turning point in my life of like “Okay I’m going to talk about this, I’m going to dig through all of this, I’m going to work through all of this, not just go relationship after relationship and write breakup songs.”

Everyone can relate to breakup songs but when you write about yourself you might think “Is this relatable” so I can see why that would be scary to do.

Yeah definitely. I was like “This is so niche, this record is so niche.” But it’s just who I am and I feel like I had to do that.

What was it like putting together the tracklist, blending together all the different sides of your story that you were telling?

It was fun! It was great having so many people work on it. It definitely is very diverse and takes you on a journey. It feels kind of like a story. I like to think of it like "Florida Man” is the end of the story. You know how in Wicked how it starts?

It starts at the end!

It starts at the end! And then they go back to the beginning. It kind of feels like that because the second track is “If She Was A Boy” and that was the first time I was like “Wait, do I like a girl?” and then that’s when everything started unraveling. I started asking questions about religion and politics and what being a white person means, just everything. My bubble burst from being in this small, tiny, conservative, religious community in Florida. And then it just walks through it.

I actually want to talk about “If She Was A Boy.” You shot the music video for that song, and in fact all the visuals, in Florida, not far from your hometown. What was it like returning to Florida, especially so close to your hometown, to film these visuals?

It was fun, it was a lot of fun. While I was writing this album I was also doing a lot of therapy and processing. I worked through a lot of the anger, and sometimes that still comes up, obviously, because of what’s going on in the world right now, but I was able to reach this place of, I had so many amazing things happen in my childhood. I have so many wonderful memories. Florida’s awesome and I do love it. Part of the reason my heart breaks is because I love Florida, actually, a lot. I just feel rejected by it. I would love to live there but realistically, I’m in a relationship and it would be a lot harder for us to live in Florida than it is in California. I still wanted to acknowledge all the beautiful parts of Florida that I love and adore. So many amazing people are there and I have so many friends there and it’s just awesome. By the time we were doing visuals I was like, “Yeah I frickin’ love it here.” It was cool to go to a lot of these places I went as a kid. The “If She Was A Boy” music video, that’s where I would go play in the summers.

It’s such a gorgeous spot. I was watching the music video and I was like “I want to go play mermaids here.”

Exactly, that’s what I would do! I would play mermaids there. I’m going back in my mind and I’m like “So many of my friendships growing up were so charged” in like a gay way and we would just play mermaids and I’m like “Okay so that’s what we’re doing for the music video.” 

I love hearing that you still love Florida, even if it doesn't always love you back. I wasn’t expecting that answer but I’m pleasantly surprised to hear that. 

I love the south and Florida too. I do miss it so much and crave it. It’s just hard, I’m in this really lovely community here in LA. That’s the most important thing, the people you surround yourself with and feeling a lot safer here. 

I want to keep talking about “If She Was A Boy” for a second. It’s inspired by a line you found in an old journal. Do you often go back to old journals for inspiration? Where does your inspiration for songs tend to come from?

That one was random, I wrote that in London. I’m a last minute packer and I threw an old journal in there because I couldn’t find my journal. It was a journal from 2018. I thought it was funny, baby me, REALLY Christian me. I was going through and being like “He he ha ha” and then I saw “If she was a boy I’d be in love.” That was a one off, I don’t normally do that. A lot of times it’s things people will say, things I hear I’ll write down, or what’s going on in life, it’s all so random, I’ve written songs from dreams. “Flordia Man” was like I’m writing an album about Florida I need to write a song called Florida Man, so I started with a title on that one. There’s not really a way I do it. 

What about titling the album, where did the inspiration for that come from?

I was looking at a lot of the themes of the songs and the ways I was feeling. I was in therapy and we were talking about family dynamics and I just realized that a lot of the reason that I am the way that I am is because I’m a woman and I’m the eldest in the sibling order. I feel all this pressure and the need to succeed and this need to be perfect and need to people please. Then I became the one that’s rebelling and speaking up for what’s right and it’s so eldest daughter core. All the songs are rooted in because I was the first born female in my family. It felt like the strongest identity factor of the topics I was writing about. 

Is there a song, or songs, that you’re most excited for fans to hear? Were there any songs last night that got a reaction you weren’t expecting?

The most fun one was “Jesus Christ and Country Clubs.” It was so fun. “The Hill” had a really big reaction, singing it live, which I wasn’t expecting. I love that one. I just wouldn’t have expected the reaction that I got, so that was really cool.

You’ve teed up my next question perfectly because I wanted to talk about “The Hill.” The end of that song where you sing without instrumentation is so powerful, how did that come about? How did you make the decision to end the song that way?

I wrote that song with my roommate Tessa Mouzourakis, she’s in this band Tommy Lefroy. They’re amazing. I needed more songs for the album and she was like “Why don’t we write one?” We co-produced it and she just slayed it. She didn’t grow up religious, she grew up in a very liberal household. Writing this song about losing God, which is truly the most painful thing I’ve ever been through, more than the stuff with my family, losing my relationship with God, which I’ve come back around, but the God that I knew, the white guy that sits in the clouds, it felt like I was losing myself. I had never been able to write about it and Tessa having this other perspective made it easier. I felt very listened to. We wrote that whole song and I had that other part, the a capella part, that kind of sounds like a choir. I had written that a year before by myself and I just let it sit, I didn’t know what to do with it. And then I was like “This is kind of a crazy idea can I show you this?” and Tessa said “We absolutely end the song with this.” That one was a really hard one for me and I don’t think I could’ve done it with anyone but Tessa and I don’t think I would’ve shown anyone that part but Tessa. 

That’s such a beautiful story and I really appreciate you sharing that because it’s clearly a complicated topic. I want to switch gears though to something exciting. You were named Spotify’s GLOW Spotlight Artist for the month of September. First of all, congratulations! This cements you as a voice in the LGBT+ music world. What does that mean to you?

It means the world. I’ve only recently been able to publicly come out because that was such a thing with my family and people back home. I don’t speak to family members because of it so to be excited about this and claim this as part of my identity super publicly and super boldly, feels really empowering. To then feel supported by DSPs and Spotify is really validating. I feel really honored and touched. It’s a really beautiful community. Chosen family is so real and I’ve really been learning that over the last few years. It’s a community I’m really proud to be a part of. It’s extremely validating, especially as a later in life queer.

What do you hope for queer fans to take away from this album, and your story in general?

This album specifically is for the later in life queers and people who grew up in either the South or a conservative or religious environment where it was harder to do that. There’s a lot of queer celebration music out and I love that. This album is more about the confusing or sad parts and recognizing how hard, and heartbreaking it is, and not feeling alone in that. Even last night, playing “Love Me” was so difficult and I ended up breaking down. I just haven’t been able to make it through that song without crying, but I felt extremely supported and seen by people who came up to me after and feel the same way. We deeply understand each other and that connection is so important to feel and remind myself of. I felt safe.

Finally, who are your OnesToWatch?

Last time I said ggwendolyn. I’m also going to say Abby Sage, she’s one of my closest friends and she’s working on a record, it’s so beautiful. My friend BEL is putting out a record, she’s amazing. Ally Evenson is another queer artist who’s amazing.