Erika Olson’s path to music was not straightforward. A former lawyer who now lives in England, her experiences as a newly stay-at-home mom taught her to slow down and observe every moment life has to offer. Returning to her passion for music, Olson has used her observations for songwriting material, exploring our collective joys and pains bit by bit. “Benefit of the Doubt” is a finely crafted song that draws out the pain, guilt, humiliation, and anger that all people endure when they are the victims and bystanders of discrimination.
Olson spins the tail out gently at first, though her lilting guitar and blues delivery let us know pretty quickly that this song is not meant to send us on our way with happy thoughts about friendship and unity. Rather, Olson pulls is in and holds us down with a sense of mounting horror at the ways our cowardice and cruelty are ultimately two sides of the same coin.
“I began writing this song in June 2020, a summer of lockdowns and protests,” Olson explains. “The Black Lives Matter movement shook the world and I felt its tremors in my bones. I wrote this song to make sense of what I was coming to understand on a visceral level as an imperfect human being longing to see justice and equality for all people. This is a story song, I’ve changed the names of the children involved and not all of it is true to fact, but my part is true to life. I bear my soul in these lyrics in the hopes that this song can be a means for healing and justice. All proceeds from this single will be donated to The Black Opry – an organisation devoted to counteracting the systemic disregard of Black Artists in Country, Americana, Blues, Folk, and Roots Music.”
Olson’s debut album will be out this spring.
Erika Olson —