Chances are you’ll suppose you recognize Rachel Platten, the singer-songwriter at the back of the inspirational, never-give-up hit “Fight Song.” Since debuting a decade in the past, the catchy, upbeat music has been a motivational anthem for everybody, from most cancers sufferers to presidential hopefuls.
However “Combat Tune” printed only one aspect of Platten’s multidimensional character—the “in point of fact encouraging, empowered facet,” she says. Her latest album, I Am Rachel Platten, invitations listeners to get to understand her on an excellent deeper, extra non-public degree, together with her struggles with “rage, jealousy, worry, grief and all of the issues that the human lifestyles includes,” she says.
“I in point of fact really feel adore it’s my right kind advent to the sector,” she provides. “This document used to be the primary time that I in point of fact vulnerably shared those [other] portions of me…. It’s like I didn’t personal the shadow facet of me as a result of I used to be too afraid to be the rest however thankful and cheerful and empowered and excited. And I believed that’s who I used to be intended to be as a result of I broke out with ‘Combat Tune.’”
Songwriting as drugs
Platten spent maximum of her 20s and early 30s seeking to make it as a musician, cobbling in combination a dwelling by way of taking part in late-night gigs, doing advertisements, appearing in duvet bands and traveling in her mom’s automobile. Then, at age 33, she launched “Combat Tune.” It wasn’t an instantaneous hit, but if it in any case took off in January 2015, it catapulted Platten into the worldwide highlight virtually in a single day. She signed with a label—one thing each aspiring musician goals of—or even carried out on degree with Taylor Swift.
On the urging of her label, Columbia Information, Platten launched the album Waves in 2017. She’s happy with Waves however, in hindsight, says she wasn’t in a position to provide new track so temporarily. The album—and the way in which Platten used to be being advertised—didn’t essentially really feel original, both.
So much has modified since then. Over the past 8 years, Platten parted tactics with Columbia Information, gave start to daughters Violet and Sophie, persisted the pandemic, and began her personal unbiased document label together with her husband, Kevin Lazan. Thru all of it, Platten says she struggled to stay her head above water, combating postpartum despair and anxiousness, in addition to persistent ache, insomnia and panic assaults that left her feeling disconnected from her frame. Songwriting—together with treatment, medicine, journaling and lots of different psychological well being methods—helped her heal.
“Those songs that I wrote for myself had been my drugs,” she says. “Those songs stored my lifestyles.”
Take “Mercy,” as an example, which Platten says she wrote “in the midst of a breakdown” in overdue 2021. Her more youthful daughter, Sophie, used to be only some months previous and have been within the clinic with a top fever; her husband, in the meantime, used to be passing a kidney stone. And Platten used to be nonetheless within the throes of her personal postpartum psychological well being demanding situations. One evening, she fled, sobbing, to the recording studio within the yard of her Los Angeles house.
“One thing in me broke,” she says. “I take note feeling like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t take any longer. I will be able to’t take another factor….’ And that wail of ache became a track inside 20 mins…. In that second, when that track rushed thru me and my ache became track—and lovely track—it used to be virtually like a solution. ‘You’re going to be OK, and your songwriting is the way in which out.’”
Different tracks on I Am Rachel Platten poured out in a similar fashion, as Platten used to be wrestling together with her non-public demons. “Unhealthy Ideas” is in keeping with a mantra Platten repeated to herself again and again whilst affected by anxiousness after the start of her first daughter, Violet: “I’m larger than those dangerous ideas.” She initially titled the track “Pay attention to this in the event you’re having a panic assault” and included guided respiring cues to re-center herself.
However a number of of the songs at the new album mirror Platten’s therapeutic adventure as she overcame her struggles and received newfound self belief in herself. She wrote “I Don’t In reality Care (Set Me Unfastened)” about in any case losing the people-pleasing dispositions she’d had since formative years. “Love me as I’m or don’t love me in any respect,” she sings defiantly. “I don’t in point of fact care what you assert, what you take into consideration me/ Virtually misplaced my thoughts seeking to make everyone glad/ I do know who I’m/ I don’t care who you wish to have me to be.”
Motherhood ‘ripped my middle open‘
Her new identification as a mum or dad additionally shines thru. Motherhood “ripped my middle open in essentially the most stunning and ferocious approach,” she says, which ended in an emotional intensity in her songwriting and creativity she hadn’t prior to now been ready to get admission to. She wrote the track “Women” as she mirrored on the entirety she was hoping and dreamed for her daughters as they grew up, like finding out to consider themselves and now not being afraid to make errors. “It used to be more or less like a prayer over them, and, as I used to be writing it, I noticed it used to be additionally for me and my internal kid and for all of the girls and women that I cherished,” she says.
She additionally believes being pregnant, motherhood and the struggles she confronted allowed her to amplify her vocal vary. “As a result of my voice has modified, how I wrote and what I do with my voice on songs is other,” she says. “There are such a lot of extra ballads in this document and such a lot of extra lengthy, held notes the place I will be able to form and bend the vowel and feature amusing with it and play with it and in point of fact specific, thru my voice, ache and grief and worry and pleasure and light-weight. You’ll listen much more soul in my voice.”
Discovering her personal definition of luck
I Am Rachel Platten is uncooked and deeply non-public. However, past the lyrics of her new songs, Platten has additionally spread out about her psychological well being struggles on social media and on degree. She desires different new mothers to understand they’re now not on my own and that it’s OK to invite for assist. And, in doing so, she’s gained a “humongous” quantity of affection, improve and reassurance from her fans in go back, she says.
“As a result of I used to be requesting assist, it used to be like a clarion name,” she says. “If I had saved that to myself, I feel I might’ve in point of fact ignored out at the most lovely connection that occurs after we are truthful about what we’re going thru and are courageous sufficient to proportion.”
Her vulnerability and psychological well being advocacy has now not long past ignored. In October 2024, the Nationwide Alliance on Psychological Sickness of New York Town venerated Platten with its “Voice for Exchange” award—a popularity that, she temporarily learned, supposed so a lot more than different types of validation she have been searching for.
“To be rewarded for this deeply internal paintings that I did to avoid wasting my very own lifestyles, it used to be so significant,” she says. “It in point of fact hit me that that used to be what luck used to be for me…. We must all in point of fact read about that definition of luck and perceive what it way for us in my view and now not what we’ve been advised it’s. What’s it in point of fact for your middle, what in point of fact lighting you up, what’s in point of fact going to make you’re feeling fulfilled while you glance again at your lifestyles?”
This text seems within the Would possibly/June factor of SUCCESS mag. Picture by way of Jess Lynn Hess.
