Nashville-based singer-songwriter Kate Vogel covers immense emotional ground on her new eight-track album, soft, out today, Friday, Sept. 20. Arriving five years after her debut 2021 LP Someone I’m Proud Of, the new record expands upon the singer’s emotional vulnerability in her songwriting and is a result of the highs and lows in her life over the last three years. Soft elevates Vogel’s talents in a short yet resonant emotional unearthing that is soundtracked by delicate guitar plucks, the singer’s limber voice and an undeniable essence of hope that radiates through even the darkest of themes.
Just over a week before the album’s release, Vogel chatted with Melodic Magazine about piecing the project together, how mental health and music have intersected in her life and the throughline of the record.
Congratulations on the release of soft. How are you feeling and where is your head at?
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. I’m actually really excited, because I just did a little video shoot with a videographer and she was telling me how much it meant to her. When you put out a new album, you don’t know how it’s gonna be received, or if the songs mean anything to anyone besides you. You hope that it does, but she really inspired me. This is gonna be fun to share what I’ve been writing about for the past few years.
Is your songwriting process something that you reserve for time in the studio, or is that something you do as it comes to you?
I actually write all of my songs outside of the studio. It would be awesome to write them in the studio and hear the ideas and production happening at the same time, [but] that’s just not how this album happened. After the bad breakup [I had] on my birthday, I called my closest friends — who are amazing songwriters and producers — and I asked them to come to a writing retreat with me in Joshua Tree. They all showed up, and we wrote “unamerican dream,” we wrote “soft,” we wrote “[broke up on my] birthday,” and it just kind of happened. A lot happened on that kind of magical trip to Joshua Tree. I felt very lucky that my friends would care about me enough to fly across the country, so it was really special.
How did you land on naming the record after the song “soft”?
Before I knew that it was going to be called “soft,” I knew that I wanted a song about how difficult it is to remain soft when you get hurt over and over and over again, and you just want to build up your walls and be closed off forever so that you can never get hurt again. And I knew that I had to write about this — the struggle of not letting past pain ruin your future happiness or stop you from finding more love, because love is all around us. So at first, the whole album was kind of about my journey back to Nashville to start making music and then I realized that in every single song, it was about trying to be open again and trying to face your emotions and still remain vulnerable.
In the five years since your debut album, how do you feel like you’ve grown as an artist?
The biggest thing that happened was that I got on antidepressant medication, and it kind of took my creativity away. I was like, well, I guess I can’t write songs anymore. So I just stayed and kept working in corporate finance, and then slowly I started to regain my ability to write songs, and now I’m able to just write songs all the time. It was just kind of my brain readjusting to [the medication]. People ask, “What is the reason that you didn’t put out music after [your debut album]?” I just couldn’t write. Now I’m writing like a song or more a day again, and it feels like I’m back.
What are you hoping listeners take away from this album? Whether from the music itself, the message, or from you as an artist?
I wrote this song called “light at the end of the tunnel,” and I purposely made it the last track on the album because I wanted it to end with the message that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and when you feel you’re in the darkest moments, that’s actually when you’re healing the most, and you cannot make it out to the next chapter of your life until you deal with all the pain you’ve experienced. That will actually propel you into the future. I could have never predicted that I would go to the California State Capitol and speak to legislators about advocating for mental health. I could have never imagined all of the amazing things that have happened.
