SINGER SONGWRITER TAYLOR CASTRO IS A STORYTELLER INSPIRED BY STORYTELLERS

BY IRVIN RIVERA

Florida-born and Atlanta-based singer, songwriter, screenwriter, actress, and creative TAYLOR CASTRO opens up her world on her 2021 independent full-length album, Girl, Afraid.

Girl, Afraid is a journey in itself. It’s a testament to TAYLOR’s storytelling ability to connect with the audience- standing out lyrically while pouring her heart out. It’s a beautiful collection of relatable narratives, sharing universal emotions and truths that bind us all on a deeper level.

Taylor writes, weaves and shares stories like a great book of fused reality and fiction. Her stories, much like her profound sound resonates deeply to her audience, and to every ear that’s willing to listen.

Growing up in Florida, she always thought up songs. As early as five-years-old, she would string together words and phrases for fun, fashioning herself into a writer during the most formative stage of her life. In between, she honed her performance chops through local musical theater productions and picked up guitar and keyboard. By middle school, she started to record on Garage Band and post her original music online inspired by everyone from Taylor Swift and The Lumineers to The Fray and The Script. She landed her first role in Assumed Killer during 2013, which led to a series of cult films such as Boyfriend Killer, Girlfriend Killer, and Dream Killer. Taking the reins as a writer, she collaborated with producers Willy Perez-Feria [Jon Secada, Roberto Blades], Rudy Pérez [Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera], and Kyng David [Baha Men] on her 2018 independent debut, PURE. The single “I Got You” amassed over 2 million YouTube views and 1 million-plus streams with “Don’t Know What To Say” on its heels at 1.8 million YouTube views. Live Nation invited her to participate in its Virtual World Tour, and she also played at Jingle Ball.

In this exclusive interview, the artist spoke about her music, GIRL, AFRAID, her musical evolution, her development as an artist, her creative process, her inspirations and more.

Hi Taylor, how are you?

I’m well! Thank you so much for asking.

What’s the story behind your album GIRL, AFRAID?

After my debut album Pure, I didn’t really have any plans on another album. In the summer of 2018, right after high school graduation and before my freshman year of college, I wrote Girl, Afraid. I decided to create an album using that song as the seed. Girl, Afraid is meant to say all of the things I avoided writing about in Pure, all of the past I tried to erase from my memory because it was too haunting to think about. I wanted it to be comforting in a new way, a way that embraced anger, sadness, obsession, mental instability, frustration with the self and fear in order to move on from it for good.

Which song resonates with you the most and why?

Jade is probably my favorite song on the album. Musically and lyrically, it’s simply too personal and honest not to be. I also really resonate with Gravity. It’s only the interlude and it’s incredibly simple musically speaking, but I think it’s powerful enough to hold its own against tracks on the album with the grandest productions.

How would you describe your sound?

I think an artist’s sound should only be as cohesive as they are. And from 18 to 22, a person is trying to figure themselves out much more than they even were as a teenager. You’ve only just gotten comfortable pedaling the bike and you look back with a smile on your face to find out that nobody is holding on anymore. I’m fortunate enough to have an incredible family that I don’t think will ever fully let go, but I think that that image embraces the period between adolescence and adulthood perfectly. I organized the album track list so that I slowly begin to lose more and more of myself until the breaking point, Avoiding Me, which I always felt was the black sheep of the album. In a film, that would be the all is lost moment. From there, I begin to slowly regain a familiar sound except, the new sound is slightly different than it was at the start. It’s more sure of itself while still being a little bit broken. I think it captures the age perfectly. In terms of the sound I’d like to lean more towards in the future, I feel most reflected in Jade. It was the last song produced on the album and we took a lot of inspiration from my favorite songs growing up, blending innocence with something more edgy. I love it.

What’s the most memorable moment in creating this album?

I have two. Both involve people who inspired songs on the album. I had Abyss written for a while and the demo was created, I believe. I was in a car with the person who the song is about. He had known I’d written a bittersweet song about him for a while, but refused to hear it because he was afraid of what I might have said. He finally agreed to listen and I remember him being so nervous that his hands were sweating as they gripped the steering wheel. It ended up being one of his absolute favorite songs on the album and that was so cool to me. The other memorable moment happened with the person who inspired the song Jade. I hadn’t seen her in years and I honestly feel like I manifested reconnecting with her because she showed up at my birthday dinner as a surprise guest. We got along like old time instantly and I obviously had to tell her that there would be a song coming out about her in less than a month. I felt really fortunate to get her blessing too and she joked about it all night. I think the coolest people are the ones who are cool with a song that’s written about them, even if it’s not exactly one three or so minute compliment.

Where do you get your inspirations whenever you create music?

I have a lot of literary inspirations. I’m a big fan of children’s literature, authors like Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kate DiCamillo, JM Barrie, Lewis Carroll and Hans Christian Andersen. I love how they’re all able to provoke profound thoughts using allegories and symbols in stories filled with childlike wonder. Their writing does not fall for the lie that something with more depth is automatically darker. That being said, I’m also a pretty big fan of Shakespeare, specifically Hamlet and his sonnets. Girl, Afraid has a lot of allusions to Greek and Roman mythology as well. I love allusions. I also pull inspiration from what I watch. My song Prize was inspired by Fight Club, for example. My favorite films, however, are usually much more lighthearted than that. I either stick to nostalgic films with female protagonists or try something generally considered very layered. Some films I’ve recently fallen in love with are Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Florida Project and The Truman Show. I’m also a big fan of the Barbie cinematic universe (like, the biggest you’ll ever meet probably). Lastly, the musicians I pull inspiration from are usually Gregory Alan Isakov or Taylor Swift but I also love bands like Mumford and Sons, The Lumineers, The Fray and Train. I’m a big fan of the soundtracks to films I watched as a kid, like John Tucker Must Die (yes, I did watch that movie as a kid, frequently) and Cheaper by the Dozen. Inspiration comes from everywhere, really. Of course, it also comes from living.

How’s your creative process like? Can you walk us through your process?

It’s different every time, but it usually starts with a melody. Sometimes I’ll think of a good lyric and create a concept from there. One consistent thing for me that isn’t always common for other songwriters is that I need to start at the start. For Ophelia’s Flowers, I found the chorus first and I loved it, but I was unable to think of a verse melody because I didn’t start with it. I had the song in my back pocket for months until I considered starting the song with the chorus. Once I did that, the whole thing just fell together. I literally wrote it in about twenty minutes while sitting in an apartment complex, waiting for a tour.

When you write your songs/music, do you think of yourself, your emotions and whatever you’re feeling, or do you think of the fans and what they would love to hear from you?

I’m either thinking of myself or the person I’m writing about. Sometimes I’ll acknowledge that listeners will love a specific lyric, but I don’t write anything because of that. I usually write it because I love it.

Which artists inspire you?

I mentioned some of them earlier, but I’ll elaborate on why I’m so inspired by Gregory Alan Isakov and Taylor Swift. Gregory Alan Isakov is hands down the best songwriter I’ve ever found. He has this magic that makes it feel like he’s saying nothing and everything at the same time. I’m always discovering something new in the lyrics of his that I’ve already read repeatedly. He’s the only artists whose lyrics alone can bring me to tears. When I was in high school, I’d play the Mumford and Sons radio on Pandora on the way home and Gregory’s song, The Stable Song, would come on frequently. It took me a lot of listens to look up the lyrics, but I was in awe once I did. In one song he writes, “were we the belly of the beast or the sword that fell / we’ll never tell,” “that tall grass grows high and brown / well I dragged you straight in the muddy ground / and you sent me back to where I roam / well I cursed and I cried, but now I know / now I know” and “I ached for my heart like some tin man / when it came oh it beat and it boiled and it rang / oh it’s ringing / ring like crazy, ring like hell / turn me back into that wild haired gale / ring like silver, ring like gold / turn these diamonds straight back into coal.”

If you give me too much slack, I’ll go on and on about why Gregory Alan Isakov is the best songwriter in the world and list down every lyric he’s ever written. So, for the sake of sanity, we’ll save that for some future thesis and I’ll talk about Taylor Swift. Like a lot of other people my age, I was essentially brought up by Taylor Swift. As a young girl, I was obsessed with her songs Enchanted, Love Story, Back to December and You Belong With Me. I lost touch with her a little bit in middle school and, because I was only hearing her songs that played on the radio, I thought she had changed. I thought her lyrics weren’t as “deep.” Now that I’m a more experienced songwriter, I realize that those songs I was disappointed with we’re actually very impressive and, in a lot of ways, deeper than the work I loved. It’s sometimes the hardest to write a catchy song, true, but it’s not only that; they were brilliant bite backs at the world and unapologetically captured femininity and youth. I appreciate them much more now than I did then. But my obsession with Taylor really returned when Folklore came out. I was blown away with how brilliant she is. I fell in love with the idea of showing different perspectives of a story with different songs in an album. She’s a magnificent storyteller. In The Last Great American Dynasty, for example, she writes, “the doctor told him to settle down / it must have been her fault his heart gave out.” Rather than spelling out what happened, she pushes past the obvious so that the listeners can come to the conclusion of what happened on their own. More so than that, she alludes to the idea that the town blamed Rebecca for her husband’s health, pushing the feminine theme of the song further. It makes it even more brilliant when you find out that Taylor Swift wrote the song about the real woman who owned the house she lived in before her. She also write, “they told me all of my cages were mental / so I got wasted like all my potential.” I mean, come on! That’s so good!

How did your music journey begin?

I would sing around the house and invent songs as a little girl. When I was eight or so, I went to drama camp and fell in love with acting as well. While I loved music and acting, however, I surprisingly wasn’t as into musical theatre as you’d think. I stopped doing to around sixth grade and focused on both arts individually. Throughout elementary school, I posted terrible songs I had created on a website I ran called iTayTay.com (don’t even bother looking because I took it down). I even figured out how to get a song on iTunes in fifth grade. It was so terrible. I got teased pretty badly for a while with that one. In middle school, I kept writing and posting covers on social media. I began making music professionally, however, when I was fifteen-years-old. I was watching a YouTube video of Sabrina Carpenter singing her song Too Young and I told my boyfriend, “I could do that. I want to do that.” He said, “So, do it.” Then, I did.

What are the highs and the lows of your career so far?

Well, the highest high is having the opportunity to create as a career in general. Other than that, I really feel the most gratitude when someone expresses a strong connection to my music. Conquering concerts and charting milestones are all really incredible too, but the interaction is what means the most to me. I’d say the lowest points are when a release isn’t as prepared as it could be and I feel like I wasted a great song by putting it out too soon. The lows are little things. There’s a lot of disputing on the inside that is difficult to deal with, but it’s worth it when someone really loves and feels understood by what I created.

How were you able to rise up to the challenges?

I’m not going to lie, the personal conflicts are difficult, but they can be cured by listening and speaking softly. As for the wasted opportunities, there’s not much to be done but push the song as much as possible after its release, take note for the next time and hope that people rediscover my discography after finding another song of mine that they love.

Do you prefer working alone when you create your art or do you thrive whenever you work with other people?

With lyrics for my own music, I prefer working along. However, I love co-writing on someone else’s song or working with a team while creating a film. It all depends.

Aside from music, what else keeps you busy?

A lot haha. I’m a film student, studying to be a producer, screenwriter and director, I audition when one comes in and I am on set when I get booked for a role, I post weekly Youtube vlogs, I have a bunch of scripts and film ideas in the making, I’m trying to start a business and I even run an Etsy shop selling mainly phone cases that I design.

Is there any advice that you can provide to any aspiring creative individual who wants to break into the industry and establish themselves as a business?

I think I’m still trying to figure that out for myself, but I definitely know that it’s imperative to have a strong brand in anything you do. That brand should connect to your target audience and everyone you work with should have a clear understanding of it. I think that starting without a clear idea of my brand has been one of the most frustrating difficulties to overcome while trying to establish myself.

If you were a book, what book would you be and why?

I think I’d be a novel of both reality and fiction about my life and personal, inner world. I have no idea what it’d be called yet, but I’ll let you know since I’ll most likely write it someday.