Vanessa Carlton Releases “Willows” From New Album ‘Liberman,’ Due October 23rd
Vanessa Carlton’s new album, Liberman, will be out in just two months. With its October 23rd release date finally confirmed, we can officially start counting down the days. But first, let’s enjoy the new single Vanessa just released: “Willows” is a soft but energized song that paints a picture in your head that could have come from your own childhood memory. The song was actually inspired by the willow trees surrounding Vanessa’s Pennsylvania home growing up. As she told USA Today, “When you’re a little kid, they’re just magic, those trees. ”
“Willows” comes full circle though, relating to Vanessa’s own life now that she herself is a mother and wife. Vanessa explains that the song “was me going through the steps of what type of thing we wanted to start with each other, what we wanted to set up. It’s scary to commit to people in that way. At least for me it was.” The song has a repeated line, “Keep safe my love.” Vanessa continues: “It really means keep this love safe, keep this connection protected, as best as you can, because I’ve chosen to be so vulnerable with you.”
Musically, “Willows” has a galloping energy, which resulted in Vanessa calling it her Headless Horseman song. “It reminds me of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the headless-horseman run at the end, where it’s coming out of the forest.”
Vanessa fans have heard “Willows” in the live setting before – most notably during a TV performance last year – but the studio version offers a different interpretation. You can watch the lyric video below:
Liberman is set for release this October, and Vanessa promises that “the real gist of it is to feel good.”
I wanted the record to make you feel good. It wasn’t some kind of emotional purging for me. Some records are like that, and sometimes it’s really amazing to get a record like that from an artist, because you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s what’s happening to me.’ But that’s not what I was doing and not what I wanted to do. I wanted it to feel like a soothing, dreamy series of songs.
Vanessa has plenty to feel good about herself. She married Deer Tick frontman John McCauley late in 2013, and though she had an ectopic miscarriage that same year, the couple now have a healthy 7 month old daughter. Her pregnancy actually delayed the album: “We had to put it on pause. The album was really done, like, a year ago.”
Liberman was produced by Steve Osborne and Adam Landry. The album is set for release on Friday, October 23rd via Dine Alone Records, and will come in two versions: A standard edition and a double album edition featuring live and demo versions of the album tracks. You can read up on all we know about Liberman in the meantime, and listen to Vanessa’s new Blue Pool EP previewing the new songs. Also be sure to pick up “Willows” on iTunes now. Check out the Liberman artwork below, and keep coming back here for all the latest Vanessa Carlton music news.
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