With a couple dozen recent tracks on hand, Louise Goffin has decided to take a new course to releasing her music.
Starting with the Oct. 20 drop of “Revenge,” a collaboration with North Carolina musician Skylar Gudasz that’s premiering exclusively below, Goffin is planning to release one song and video at a time, primarily through The Orchard and her official website, at six- to eight-week intervals.
“I’m going back to the age of 1965 and 45s,” Goffin, the daughter of legendary songwriters Carole King and Gerry Goffin, tells Billboard. “It’s really just a natural evolution. What we’re living with right now in the world is attention is a greater currency than ever, ’cause records aren’t making money. It’s a digital world and it’s a crowded world, so the last thing I wanted was to have to vie for attention within a company that would then vie for attention out in the world with an audience. I don’t want all these great tracks that you put a lot of time and energy into to fall by the wayside and not get their due attention. So I think this is the best way to go.”
Goffin definitely has material ready. Experiencing “greater productivity, more creativity and just feeling more inspired,” she’s worked with Dave Way to co-produce 24 songs, collaborating with the likes of Rufus Wainwright, Squeeze’s Chris Difford, Benmont Tench from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, Pete Thomas from Elvis Costello’s Imposters and others.
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“Some people have been dropping into the studio, for sure,” Goffin reports. “I find it’s a climate where artist really want to be involved with other artists. Nobody wants to be isolated in just their own stuff. It’s very uplifting to cross-pollinate and work with other people.”
That attitude is what led to “Revenge,” in fact. Goffin was taking part in a Wild Honey Orchestra benefit tribute to The Band during the spring, which also included Gudasz. Talking in the dressing room they decided to get together at Goffin’s house, where Gudasz showed her a guitar riff that Goffin paired with some lyrics she’d been working on, inspired by a friend’s experience with binge-watching cable TV news. “It was just the perfect fit,” Goffin recalls. “The song kinda came out almost like an egg. It just showed up. It was written very quickly, and I said, ‘Look, while you’re here why don’t we go in my backyard, I have a little studio set up there — (Gudasz) called it the magic tree house — and why don’t we just make a demo?’ It all came super quick.”
The video was done right after that, filmed on the street by a friend as Goffin and Gudasz mugged for the cameras wearing wigs, with Goffin adding the pop art elements afterwards. “It was just a really, really productive day,” Goffin says with a laugh.
Goffin hasn’t yet determined which track will be her next release, but she’s looking forward to building a different kind of “body of work” — and doesn’t rule out the possibility of a more traditional album project in the future. “It’s a living thing,” he explains. “I will be creating more CD projects. I hope at some point to be able to have the demand to create vinyl. The important thing is to keep the music coming out and to get in the habit of constantly creating a contact and having an ongoing dialogue with your audience.”