P&P Spotlight: Caroline Romano (EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW)

As we welcome summer, let's consider what comprises the perfect soundtrack for this season. Road trip songs, for example, embody the atmosphere of fresh air, often echoing memories associated with the outdoors and warmer weather. A fleeting summer fling might even come to mind - a short-lived romance that one looks back on with a certain nostalgia, because it was fun while it lasted. With her expert world-building and new-school indie alternative style, Caroline Romano captures this perfectly in her single "Mississippi Air."

The Nashville-based singer-songwriter creates music that fuses real-life experiences, prominent pieces of media, and her imagination. Her material places an emphasis on scene-setting and the development of a narrative, more of which we'll see in her upcoming EP. Playlists & Polaroids recently got to chat with this rising star, and we gained some valuable insight on how her background has influenced the current state of her artistry. Read our full conversation with her below!

Image credit: Caroline Romano, graphic created by Karly Ramnani

YOU'LL LOVE CAROLINE ROMANO IF YOU LISTEN TO: Noah Kahan, Holly Humberstone, Taylor Swift, Charlotte Sands, Sufjan Stevens, Twenty One Pilots

First of all, what inspired you to get into music? How did you know that this is what you wanted to do?

I was 13 when I decided that this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I think growing up a really awkward and shy child, music was the first thing that made me actually feel like myself. When I started writing and playing songs, even in front of my parents, it was the first time where I felt like, "Oh my god. This is actually who I am." For me, even back then, that was a big enough indicator that this was what I'm meant to do.

I feel like there is no set way to break into the industry, but if you know what your passion is from a young age, that's sort of your sign to keep pursuing it!

It was definitely a blessing to know young about what I wanted to do with my life. It's not something I take for granted, because it's hard to figure out what you want to do with your life. So to know at 13 is definitely something I'm very grateful for.

What would you say goes into writing your songs? Where do you find inspiration most often, real life events and otherwise?

I think it is a bit of everything. I mean, often times it is real life events that'll inspire me to write a song, whether it's a breakup or a situation that I've seen another friend go through, or just a feeling I'm going through in my own brain. I'm also inspired a lot by literature and movies. My song "Ireland in 2009" is about this movie Cherry Bomb, with Robert Sheehan, who I love. This upcoming EP that I'm writing is based off of a breakup that I went through, but it's also heavily influenced by this book The Song Of Achilles. Life begs to be written, I say, so life inspires me I guess.

Now that you've mentioned literature and movies, I can definitely see these kinds of influences in "Mississippi Air" - which definitely feels like a song in movie form. How did you go about writing this one specifically?

About this time last year, I went home to Mississippi for a week. I had been really busy in Nashville, so I decided to go home. I was in the middle of the end of a relationship, and I could feel it coming on. I remember one day, I was literally just driving my brothers truck home from the pool that we have in my neighborhood. It was the first time where I had a breath of fresh air moment in a long time, where I didn't feel suffocated by life. I then took what I was going through in this current relationship, and put it in the scenario of a hometown relationship from a while back, [as if it was] something to reminisce on. I was kind of melting the two worlds together.

I love how you pulled from two different situations and used elements of fiction to blend them together. I think that's a really underrated technique, and I honestly wish we saw that more often.

Yeah! In life, you have to make it more whimsical sometimes than it maybe is. But that's also the fun part of songwriting, that you get to do that.

In general, your sound combines storytelling and rock perfectly. How do you feel as though you have evolved, and how did you arrive at this current niche?

Having started so early, I've had a lot of time to experiment and even release music that I would not necessarily release now, like sonically, because you're just testing things out. I used to release EDM music, and then I went full pop. But I've always had a little bit of a darker side to my writing, and to my brain, and I think that rock element has always been there. It's been a lot of experimentation - I grew up very inspired by people like Taylor Swift, and the storytelling aspect of her music. She definitely inspires all of us in that way. And I think just taking my songs and putting them through different levels of production and seeing which ones feel the most like that. I'd say probably a year ago I landed on this song, and I just knew that's what it is for me.

How do you feel as though the Nashville music scene has influenced your artistry?

The Nashville community is very interesting because we have a small pop segment of writers here, but it's growing, and there is very much a Nashville pop sound, which is cool. I think it's inspired me in that the storytelling aspect of country music is still very present, even in the pop aspects of the music we write here. And the community is small, so it's very easy to get really familiar with the writers and producers in town, and just going in and laying out your soul to them. In that way, it creates a lot of opportunity for artists myself to completely write what's in their heart, whether they know it or not. And that's what it's going to sound like, because there's not really a lot of a mold you've got to fit into here, which is cool. Nashville is very versatile as of now, which is cool.

When did you realize that you needed to move out of Mississippi, and how has that decision impacted the artist you are today?

I knew very young that Nashville is where I wanted to go. I started traveling and doing music on a somewhat professional level. I started having my songs on Radio Disney and stuff when I was 15-16 years old, which is crazy. I tried LA, I went to New York, I wrote from home, I did all the stuff, I started homeschooling. The time spent away from Nashville, I felt like I just kept wanting to go back, because I feel like that's where the best music I was making was being written. So when I was 17, I talked to my parents, and they were like, "Yeah, if you want to move out and graduate early, then I think you could go up there and start doing it all the time." I'm 21 now, and I just felt called to do it. It was super scary to move up here at 17 - I didn't really know anybody, except for the people I worked with, and they were all adults. I was pretty lonely the first year or two I'd say, but then you find your place and your people. It just takes time.

That'd be great advice for anyone moving to a new city! Tell us about your upcoming EP - what can fans expect?

I call my first album, that I put out in February of 2022, chapter one. And this is chapter two, in that it is a bit of a slight evolution, but it still feels the same. It's a bit more laid back, sonically it's not as much rock. It's seven songs and it's all about one relationship, one story. It's linear, from start to finish, kind of the different stages of it as I saw it start and end. It's all about the first time I ever fell in love, which was last year. I call it a brief epic, because it is based on this book he gave me, The Song Of Achilles. I look at that relationship now as something that meant so much to me, and so all I really know how to describe it as was kind of a brief epic. It was amazing, but it was short-lived, and that is tragic and beautiful at the same time.

I love that, and I can't wait to hear it! What parts of the project were you involved in, and does it include any collaborations you're particularly excited about?

I worked with a few of my really close friends on this record. John Townsend, who's here in Nashville, produced a lot of it. He produced four of the songs. I wrote the first song on the EP with him, right after I got broken up with, and he just kind of got it from day one. He's down to experiment, but he has that simplicity to his production. He has that darkness to it too, which I love. I wrote with Spencer Jordan, Michael and Chuckie Aiello, and Andrew Gomez on this project. I also wrote with Anna Hamilton. A lot of close friends, a lot of people, a lot of names, but it's really cool to go in and have a therapy session with these people. And somebody starts pulling up a track that describes exactly what you were thinking. I'm very grateful, because I couldn't have written without them.

Do you have a particular track on this EP that you're excited for us to hear?

I'm very excited for what's going to be the title track of the EP. It's called "St. George," and it's the first song I wrote. I brought [the lyrics] to my friend John Townsend and he put this cool piano part over the first verse I started writing. We wrote it all in less than an hour, I'd guess. I'm very proud of it. I feel like it's a cool combination of both simplicity and the poppy elements I've been diving into. I'm really excited for people to hear that song.

I can't wait to hear it either! How do you think the songs from this EP that have already been released fit into its larger story, with the progression of a relationship that you described?

"Guts" and "Mississippi Air" are the first two songs I've released as singles from the EP. I wanted to release something that would still be commercially listenable, and people could take out of context of the EP. I thought "Guts" would be really good for that, because it is the fastest and most energetic song on the EP. Both "Guts" and "Mississippi Air" I kind of wrote about the middle of that relationship. It's a bit of anxiety in that you can sense it's kind of ending. I found myself only feeling comfortable and feeling at peace with that relationship only when I was looking back on things - either when I was inebriated in some way, or at a party talking to him, or if I was looking on memories that had already been made. Or making those memories and in real time thinking, "This is going to be something I'm going to miss someday." Even knowing then that the relationship wasn't going to last long. So just kind of the middle of the line there. Both of them have fictional elements mixed in, but dynamically, "Guts" is the extreme of the EP, and "Mississippi Air" is as soft as it gets. I've kind of already put that out there, and everything else is somewhere in the middle.

Image credit: Caroline Romano

That's really cool! I know we already mentioned Taylor Swift, but other than her, who else would you say influences you?

Noah Kahan, lyrically, is probably my favorite artist of all time. I think he is just a genius, and he writes about things that I didn't even know I felt in my own brain, which is crazy. What first struck me about Noah - and I've been a fan of him since some of his earliest albums and EPs - is that he has a very introspective take on everything. A very fleeting, but everlasting take on youth. He's an anxious and seemingly kind of depressed guy, but he still writes about life like it's beautiful. Because it is, and I love that. I've always related to how he puts everything, and I just fell in love with his verbiage.

Who's your dream collaboration?

Noah's definitely up there. That's been a dream. I've written songs in mind, like one day if Noah could ever hop on this, that'd be crazy. Noah Kahan or Taylor Swift I'm gonna have to say, to be basic with it, but it's the truth.

What's your favorite Taylor Swift album?

I'm a big Folklore and Evermore girl. And then 1989 is up there. But oh god, there's no way to pick a favorite. I feel like my favorites are probably Speak Now, 1989, Folklore, and Evermore, but Taylor Swift can do no wrong. She's just perfect.

So valid. That brings us to our final question, I ask this to everybody for P&P - let's do this with "Mississippi Air." What is your favorite lyric from this song, and can you walk us through yourself writing it? Why does it particularly resonate with you?

I like most of the lyrics, but I'd say my favorite lyric is "Felt our feelings like my hair felt the humidity." That's a very specific Mississippi thing, because it's humid as hell where I'm from in Mississippi. I just like that imagery of physically being able to wear your feelings, and it affecting you like the weather. That's how it feels to be young and in love, where you just wear it all over your face, and your being, and your body, and everything. I think I'm really proud of writing "Mississippi Air" because it does involve aspects of a relationship I was currently in, but already putting it in the past tense. There's a lot of little elements and sentimental home mementos to me, based off street names, and then there's a Harry Styles reference in there, and there's a truck. There's a lot of little things that may not mean a lot to other people, but they mean a lot to me, and I hope that when listening, anyone who hears it can put those things into their own special moments for themselves. Or think of whatever it is that has that same level of importance to them.

We're in love with Caroline's vivid, descriptive approach to storytelling, and her distinctive brand of indie alt-rock that she continues to cultivate. While we can't get enough of "Mississippi Air" and "Guts," we can't wait to hear them in the context of her upcoming EP's full story. We can't thank Caroline enough for sharing her personal journey and perspective with us, and hopefully this convinces you to give her discography a listen! Here's a playlist we've curated to help you get started.