In the age where self-deprecation seems to be trendy, Kate Yeager is breaking those boundaries, and instead, preaching about loving yourself a little more. We talk with Kate about her most recent EP, A Little More, along with her live performances, and her upcoming music in 2022.
Melodic Magazine: Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into singing and songwriting.
Kate Yeager: When I was younger, I was actually training as a pretty intense athlete. But I always really loved music. It was always something that I was really passionate about. My mom used to pay my swim coaches extra money to make me swim extra yards since I had so much energy as a kid. I then got hurt at a young age from overusing my body [from sports]. After I couldn’t swim, I had so much energy that my mom was like, “You have to do something. You’ve always really loved music, so why don’t you audition for the musical?” After I did that, I couldn’t go back.
As for writing, I was just a very tiny angry frustrated little child who didn’t know how to express my feelings. One day I kind of put it all together and thought, “I want to tell my own stories.”
Use three words to describe the overall theme of your EP “A Little More.”
Ambitious abundant love.
Is that a phrase or three separate words?
A phrase. I think that’s for yourself, for your exes, for your pals, for strangers. This EP is about love and all of its forms. And that’s why it ends with “A Little More.” Loving yourself is the bread and butter to every other thing that you do.
I have seen your live show multiple times and I love how you interact with the crowd and how you get the audience involved. Your performance is so genuine and people seem to automatically trust and understand you, even if it’s the first time they are hearing your music. What has been your favorite live show so far?
I’ve had a lot of really crazy moments, I’m not gonna lie. I feel really lucky that I can’t point to one performance and be like, “That was it. That was the one that I’m gonna remember.” There was a proposal [during a live show] that was so special. That’s all I’ve ever wanted my music to be, is just small parts of other people’s stories the way the way my favorite records were to me growing up. I am just so baffled every time somebody says, “I relate to this song!” That means we are both not alone, and that is wild. My favorite pandemic performance was this couple in Arizona. I Zoomed in for their first dance. They did their own wedding ceremony with just the two of them. I couldn’t stop smiling.
You recently relocated from New York to Nashville. What made you decide to make that move?
I really want a grill. And I really want a garden [laughs]. It’s really hard to grow roots somewhere where you’re suspended three stories in the sky. It’s just a different life. New York, when I was younger, was my biggest dream. I applied to NYU, I got in, and I never looked back. But then one time, I was house sitting in Cincinnati, and I realized, “Oh my gosh, I can have laundry. I can have a dishwasher. I can have a driveway where I don’t have to drag my gear up six flights of steps.” New York is always gonna be there, and maybe I’ll come back. I mean, I’ve only been in Nashville for five days [laughs].
Hopefully I’m allowed to spoil this, but one of my favorite songs of yours is “Are You Sure We Just Met?” which is not yet released. I love the story behind it and how that song came about, so would you mind sharing it?
The story is basically that I slid into the sweet, sweet DMs of a songwriter I really admired. And I figured, it’s the pandemic and now is the time to write with anyone who I want since everyone is working across the Internet. In the Zoom call, we ended up talking for three hours and my face was hot, I didn’t know what was going on, and I was overwhelmed. And I said, “Ok, so if we were to write a song about the past three hours of our conversation, what would you call it?” And she said, “I would call it, ‘Are You Sure We Just Met?'” Throughout writing the whole song, we really found a deep, deep crush and romantic interest in one another. And we’ve been together for over a year and a half.
Big spoiler alert. Expect the song in early 2022! Every year of your 20’s, you go through a whole another year of puberty. One of my best pals said to me, “You will not be the same person that you were at twenty-three, as you will be at twenty-four, etc. Until you are in your thirties, every year of your life is different.” I feel like my upcoming album is quarter life crisis music [laughs]. It’s about love, learning about my mind, nostalgia, leaving the place I’ve loved for 8 years. “Are You Sure We Just Met” is for anybody who has ever talked to somebody for 20 minutes and has thought, “Wow. I cannot live without this person.”
Do you have any advice for people who are trying to love themselves a little more?
I was working 3 jobs in New York to pay my rent. I was just out of college. It was my dad’s birthday and I needed to take off time from work, which was really stressful for me because if I took off one day, that was going to significantly impact my ability to pay my bills. But it’s my dad, I love him, so I decided to go upstate to see my folks. When I got there, I went downstairs to my studio which was my safe haven in high school. I found these lyrics I wrote when I was sixteen, which is now the first verse to the song “A Little More.” And I was like, “I am just as lost as I was when I was sixteen, and as I am now in my twenties. Does this ever get better?” The biggest trick is to be gentle with yourself. Treat yourself like you would a friend. Don’t be an a**hole to yourself! You wouldn’t be an a**hole to your friend. My therapist said to me, “If I was mean to you, would you keep coming back to therapy?” And I said, “Probably not!” And she said, “So why would you keep being mean to you? You’re not gonna keep coming back to you if you’re gonna be mean to you all the time.” Be gentle, be patient, be graceful with yourself.
http://https://youtu.be/PuFtDb-4ZCA
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