Singer-songwriter Jillian Edwards released a real gem of an independent EP at the end of 2011, but chances are good you haven’t heard it yet. Headfirst is her second release, and it is a great collection of songs that seamlessly combines folk, pop and rock sounds with touches of ambient and country grooves as well. The recent graduate of Baylor University gives her tracks great weight with her insightful, upbeat tales of love and heartbreaking odes about love lost, and her clear, impressive vocals get your attention as much for their variety as for their complete lack of auto-tuning.
As Edwards begins her career as a full-time musician, she talks about her writing process, how she handles the whole “Art versus Faith” discussion, how relationships have proved to be fodder for songs, and why music means so much to her.
So why don’t you tell us a little bit about Headfirst?
Sure! I guess the songs are kind of from all over the place in my life. One of them I wrote maybe three or four years ago, and then it ranges all the way up to the months where I was in the studio last year. I picked my favorites and the ones I felt were the most honest for me, sound-wise and lyrically. That’s the thing I definitely value a lot is being able to record and perform songs that are fun for me to sing because they’re true for me. And I felt like these seven songs embodied my sound well and had a good range.
As for the title, Headfirst, one of the lyrics from one of the songs on the album, “Mind Made Up,” has a line that talks about diving headfirst into someone and I just felt Headfirst kind of embodied how I want to live my life in every area. Musically I want to give 100%, and I want to do that in my relationships as well, so it just felt like the right title.
There are artists who want to go right into Christian radio, like a Casting Crowns or MercyMe, and yet there are other artists like yourself who are Christians but don’t define their music by how many Jesus bombs they drop into their lyrics. So how did you decide to go that latter route with your music and lyrics?
That’s a great, great question. I never sit down and think to myself, “I’m gonna write this sort of song or that sort of song,” or “I’m gonna write about a relationship with a guy or the Lord.” I never have a plan ahead of time; I just sit down and write about whatever I’m going through and thinking about. My hope is that my relationship with God and my life and my heart, he’s who I hope to turn everything towards. No matter what I’m writing about—whether bluntly using God’s name, or whether I’m talking about a relationship—my hope is that those two areas would be blurred together as one and not to separate the Christian view from my world view. My hope is that they would be the same just because my hope for my life in general is that I would live in such a way that there is no distinction between God and the rest of my life. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. For all the years I’ve listened to music or written about it, I’ve always been drawn to this idea of an intersection between art and faith. And to be a Christian musician doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be on Christian radio stations all the time. Not that there’s anything wrong with that—
Right.
But there is definitely a culture within the Christian world where that’s the only kind of thing they accept, and then there are those who are on the other side saying, “We have our faith and we work that out in what we do, but God’s called us to work it out in a different way than you guys do.”
Absolutely.
So yeah, I totally get what you mean.
Cool. I’m so glad that you understand. Sometimes it’s hard to explain depending on who I’m talking to. It’s always refreshing to get that kind of feedback where you know what I’m talking about (Both laugh).
It’s different for everybody. And I don’t want to make assumptions about people, but you hear about life in the South and in the Bible Belt and things like that. And as someone who’s never been to that part of the country, I wonder sometimes if that sentiment is just an exaggeration of the truth, or is that really, really how it is down there? And is it just that hard to be that kind of artist where it’s like “You’re a Christian but you’re not singing praise songs…I don’t get it?” How does that work?
Well, fortunately with my family it’s never been hard because it’s just kind of understood that that’s the way I write, so there hasn’t really been a question of that. And, really, moving to Nashville where there is a wealth of people who believe and are doing the same thing that I am in the same way, that helps. I mean, sure, there are a ton of country and contemporary Christian artists here, but I’m feeling really at home as far as how I feel specifically called because I’m meeting more and more people who I’m having this exact conversation with. So yeah, definitely there are people who are confused by that, and there are definitely people who are on board and understand completely.
Nice. You mentioned the relational aspect of the songs—whether you’re talking about a guy, God or something else—and one of the things I’m always struck by is just listening to something an artist has written and wondering: how much of it is autobiographical and how much is observational?
I’d say within every song on Headfirst there’s at least a percentage of it that comes from my personal life. If I can experience a little bit of a feeling that’s true for me, I can dwell on that and sort of create around it. So, sometimes, depending on the song, it’s 100% exactly my story, and sometimes it’s more like 70/30. Or sometimes it’s 10% what I’m feeling and with the rest I’m kind of blowing it up and imagining it as something more than it was. So yes, in some way it’s all autobiographical because it starts with something I’ve felt or experienced before.
Your songs run the gamut of emotions that are associated with love. There is this recognition of how exquisitely beautiful and painful it can be, just given the nature of life and relationships and what happens along the way sometimes. I know you said earlier that when you write you just sort of go, you don’t have any preconceived notions of what you’re gonna do. But considering some of the themes on this record, I’m curious if this was your goal from the start—focusing on the wide-ranging feelings associated with love—or if this is simply how the album wrote itself?
I would say it’s more toward how the album wrote itself. I had other songs to choose from over the past couple years and I chose a balance of what I felt like encompassed the beauty of the happiness of when things go well, and the beauty of the pain when things don’t go the way I want them to go. So I guess I chose carefully so that I could have both sides, but I also didn’t have that sort of intention when I was initially writing any of the songs. That’s a good question!
Thank you. What can you tell me about the story behind “Birthday?”
That was one of the 100 percenters (both laugh). That is a completely autobiographical song.
There have been times I’ve spoken with artists about songs that I was sure were autobiographical and have discovered instead that they were completely fictional. “Nope, I just heard about some guy that was being a jerk to his girlfriend and I thought I’d write about it,” and I’m just like, “Wow, well you really nailed it then!”
Nope, I’m not that good of a writer! The story behind “Birthday” is…this song and another track on the album, “Once Should Be Enough,” refer to two different relationships of mine, and while they are about different relationships they are similar in the sense that they both focus on the painful aftermath of a relationship. In this situation I had ended things, so it was kind of a reverse because on “Once Should Be Enough” I was the one who had been let down, and on this one I felt like I was letting someone else down. But I knew the bottom line was that I was doing him a favor and doing me a favor since the relationship wasn’t true for me. Kind of the whole idea of what’s best for me is what’s best for him too…just believing that there’s a plan for all of that.
So it was me trying to reconcile the story of “Once Should Be Enough” and kind of being burned by that person…he didn’t quite back away when he should have and he should have let me move on. “Birthday” was me trying to do the opposite of that, trying to be kind by backing away when really I cared about this person so much. I wanted to stay involved in their life and I wanted to call all the time and I wanted to just let him know that I cared and everything. But I knew that at the end of the day what would be best for him was for me to not show that kind of affection because I knew how it had slowed me down in the “Once Should Be Enough” relationship.
What does music mean to you, personally?
Ohhhhh man. It is a game changer. It can completely set a mood on fire. You can make happy turn into ecstatic and it can make painful feel extremely heartbreaking and devastating. I love how it can take me places, and I love getting swept away by a song in either of those ways. I’ve just grown up around it and been around it all my life, and I think I’ll always be really affected by it.
So that’s what it means to you, but why do you then make music?
I make music because it’s a lifestyle for me. I feel lucky that I get to make a career out of it and record and travel and perform, but I would be writing these songs whether anyone was going to hear them or not because it’s expression for me, and it’s (laughs) kind of therapeutic to write all of these songs. They force me to think through them and feel each new thing from start to finish as opposed to stuffing them down inside me. And then playing these songs for people is a whole other level of things. Making myself feel really vulnerable in front of people I don’t know—and even people that I do know—and just sharing stories…that whole aspect of it is thrilling and terrifying (both laugh) and exciting.
