Words by Carol Wright | Photo courtesy of Amanda Cee Media
We got to chat with Kathryn about her single “It’s A Whole Thing” and music she’s loving.
When did you become passionate about singing?
Music has always been a huge part of who I am, but my love of singing really blossomed when I started writing songs at age 16. When I first started, my goal was to write songs that would best highlight my voice. As I grew as a songwriter, that shifted to me pushing myself as a singer so that I would be able to give my songs what I felt they needed. A large part of that growth came from learning how to sing background vocals. I love that it requires me to use my voice as an instrument, playing with my vocal delivery and tone to create texture and build for the song.
What inspired the sound of your new single “It’s A Whole Thing?”
I have to give a lot of the credit to my collaborators Joshua Bartholomew and Lisa Harriton, who I wrote the song with. Meeting them definitely felt like fate. I had known exactly what I wanted my signature sound to be, with dynamic tracks and a lot of lush background vocals, but I didn’t know how to achieve it. Meanwhile, Josh and Lisa had all of these incredible production ideas that they wanted to play with but were waiting for the right artist. With every song we have written over the last year and a half, we have refined our process and our signature sound. It has actually gotten to the point that I will come into a session with a melodic idea and part of a lyric, and they will have their own melodic idea and a track that they created for it, and despite not sharing the ideas with each other beforehand, they somehow end up working perfectly together. “It’s A Whole Thing” was one of those songs.
What was the inspiration behind the lyrics for “It’s A Whole Thing?”
I always have a couple of catchphrases that I frequently use, one of them being, “It’s a whole thing,” which I regularly say when the answer to someone’s question involves too much of a story to go into. Josh, Lisa, and I had been toying with the idea of writing a “feel good” song using one of my catchphrases. With this in mind, the idea of telling someone, “I love you. It’s a whole thing,” because there was too much to say, came to mind. The three of us then crafted the storyline of my character, who is in a relationship with a guy who has freely communicated his love and his belief that the relationship is the real deal. My character feels the same way and wants to make that declaration, but for some reason, can’t seem to actually say it. I like to envision that the next time the guy tells my character he loves her, that she would respond by playing him the song, which captures everything that three words can’t.
Where can our readers find your music?
“It’s A Whole Thing,” as well as my older music, is on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes and anywhere else you can buy music online. I have a lot of new music that I am very excited about releasing in the coming months, so I would, of course, recommend that you stay tuned!
What are some songs you’re loving right now?
I go through phases where I only listen to one genre for a couple of weeks and then move on to the next, then the next until I “rediscover” one of my previous phases and start the cycle all over again. My most recent phase is country music—Chris Stapleton and Brett Young in particular—which replaced classic 80’s jams.
