To many artists, their creations are their children, the means through which their hearts and souls are given flight. For Chloe Stroll, the process to birth her first full musical project has been a long one, since being signed at the tender age of fourteen, all the way to the release of her debut album, Bloom In The Break, over a decade and a half later.
In that time, she’s birthed a real baby of her own: son Leo with her husband, Olympic snowboarder Scotty James. Creating work with this new perspective as a mom has lead to an LP unlike one she could have ever imagined when she was just a teenager. At an intimate gathering celebrating the release of her heartfelt record, we caught up with Chloe so that she could tell us more.
This evening, you’ve talked a lot about your songwriting process. What are some of your favourite lyrics that you’ve ever written?
I love when lyrics and melody just hit, like… hit nail on the head of the feeling. And when things come together and you’re just like, damn, that worked really well.
I feel that way about the chorus for my single home? It’s simple. It’s, “Baby, I’m home when I’m with you.” Tthat is exactly how I feel about Scotty and I love the melody that we put to it. I think that that was really great.
There’s a song on the album Bloom In The Break called “Prisoner”. For example, I think, for me, I personified my anxiety, which a lot of people may take very differently when they hear the song, but I loved that I was able to give it that kind of character and be prisoner to that. So I think it’s not one specific line or two, it’s in general… how you can interpret it for yourself.
You talked about how long this journey has been for you to put together this album. How did you know that the project was finally complete? How could you sit in that moment?
I’d written so many songs! I had released a few, and it was a very obvious step next. Of course, you know, I’d always wanted to release an album, that’s such a big feat.
I think when I really started to see these songs and listened through, and I had this vision that kept coming to me, it was kind of like the sign of, “Okay, you know what? Maybe we’ve actually made it, and maybe this is the beginning of the journey.” So I’m really glad it was.
Something that I hope people who listen to the album pick up on, is how soulful and timeless your music sounds. It feels like you’ve really honed in on that sense that anyone from any generation could listen to the songs.
I love hearing that, because that was really something that I wanted to make sure absolutely comes across.
Absolutely. I love that!
Thank you for saying that!
Over the decades, if you could collaborate with any other singer-songwriters, who would you want to pick?
Oh God. I have so many. I mean, if I could collaborate [with]… whether it would be a John Legend, whether it would be a Beyonce or whether it would be a Lewis Capaldi… Ed Sheeran…
The list goes on and on. I admire so much the artists like them, who are 100% true to themselves, true to their journey, who you really feel like you know them and they’re not doing anything to please anybody else. They’re living their life. God, that would just be a dream come true.
I’m sure you’re basking in this album roll out, but are you already looking forward to what you might do next in your upcoming projects?
I mean, look, we’ve got, you know, more than 70 songs.
70!
Yeah! I’ve definitely got some that I love that maybe didn’t fit 100% for this project, but for sure, I think that there’s a lot of exciting things for the future.
Bloom In The Break is out on the 12th of September, and you can check out Chloe’s latest singles on streaming platforms.