Interview by Carol Wright | Photos Courtesy of Ryan Wright
We got to chat with singer/songwriter Ryan Wright about her single “A Dream I’ll Forget” and how writing has always been a part of her life.
Have you been performing from a young age?
I have been! My dad is a musician and also my co-producer and I started performing alongside him from the early age of nine. I’ve always been drawn to being on stage. Even before I started to sing and write, I would wander up on stage to sit next to him when he’d perform.
Did you write poetry or short stories prior to writing songs?
I am very much a lover of English and used to take all the English classes and APs in school. I was actually on my school newspaper staff and tutored kids in writing at school. I love writing. I have done a lot of poetry in the past, but I definitely tend to write short stories more. I have so many little stories on my phone that take up all my storage.
Who are some of your musical inspirations?
I grew up listening to a wide variety of music, coming from a blended family with excellent taste. My parents definitely raised me on all the good stuff from the eighties and nineties, but my grandparents from Texas raised me on Phil Spector era sixties and doo-wops as well as classic country artists like Willie Nelson and Glen Campbell. Rickie Nelson and Roy Orbison as well as the Everly Brothers and Connie Frances are big inspirations for me. I also am very much influenced by The Cars and The 1975 and my favorite band of all time, The Killers. My dad too. He taught me everything I know about songwriting and I love that bond I have with him. Being in this industry can be difficult and hard to navigate and my dad has really been my best friend and biggest inspiration through it all.
“A Dream I’ll Forget” talks about the realization that a relationship might not have been everything someone thought. What inspired the lyrics?
I wrote the song pacing around my bedroom two weeks into quarantine. I had been going through some drama and had a ton of bottled up emotions and unresolved problems that were too confusing to sort through and prior to that I felt like I was living in this dreamlike state where everything was perfect and good, but underneath the surface, there were issues and things that I was ignoring because I hated the idea of something so good actually being bad. The only thing I could compare it to was when you wake up and can’t remember your dream, but you have the gut feeling it was good. It’s like the worst feeling of bittersweetness. The lyrics have a bit of yearning and desperation for that surface-level happiness, but also the realization that the melancholy will still be there when you wake up from a good dream that wasn’t real.
There is a dreamy, ethereal quality to the song. Were there any particular influences when it came to how the song sounds?
I loved the show Euphoria at the time and the soundtrack to that show was very synth-heavy and dreamy. I wanted it to take the listener on a trip. I’m not even completely sure what made me use fireworks I recorded on the 4th of July as a backbeat, but there was something that just clicked as soon as we distorted them and popped them in the mix.
What advice do you have for aspiring singers?
I would say to stay grounded with what you feel is right for you as an artist and don’t let anyone tell you what kind of artist you have to be.