Soul-stirring Americana artist Brittany Collins is a late bloomer who never imagined that her calling would be singing, but once she discovered it, there was no turning back. Raised in the Pacific Northwest, she didn’t step on stage to perform in public until her twenties. Her soulful voice immediately captivated audiences with its intensity and raw energy, turning her into a darling of the Northwest music scene. Collins quickly built up an impressive resume of performances from acoustic coffeehouse shows to summer festival stages before landing spots on more extensive tours throughout California. After releasing two self-produced, self-released EPs, The Hitchhiker EP and Rough Sides, Collins will release her debut album, Things I Tell My Therapist, on August 12th, 2022.
“Two Worlds” is an epic Americana waltz, its sweeping production practically painting the towering mountains and ribbons of highway that hug the Pacific Northwest. Collins’ loneliness cuts through the song, though there’s a warmth that reminds us that things usually turn out right.
“This song really is a love letter to the Pacific Northwest and a testament to my own tendency to be drawn to contradictory things,” Collins explains. “I’m always thinking about the ways people like to describe themselves in very binary terms. Am I an introvert or an extrovert, am I a city kid or a country kid? And I always kind of felt like I was caught in between.”
Collins spent much of her youth traveling between her small mountain town and catching punk shows in Seattle.
“I actually wrote this song in my head sitting on a bus coming home from Seattle. I was attending graduate school at the time and to save money I would drive to the nearest bus station and then would take the bus the rest of the way into the city, which took about two hours in total,” she continues. “I was sitting on the bus feeling dog tired after a 12-hour day and was just reflecting on my crazy life choices and the fact that I’ve spent half my life just traveling around trying to get all the experiences I can possibly get in. The first line in the song just sort of popped into my head “take the bus halfway home from the city, then drive till the cars become trees”. I thought that was actually a pretty good line for a song so I just sort of started writing the rest of the song in my head and by the time I was home I had the melody and most of the lyrics all worked out and I just went straight to my guitar and picked out the chords and that was that.”
Things I Tell My Therapist will be out on 8/12