Project Red Notebook is the first EP that I released, in November of 2020. It was a collection of some of my favorite songs I had written at the time.

My favorite part of the EP is the title. When I first started songwriting at 11, I was absolutely terrified to show my music to anyone. When I got a song idea I would go up to the attic in my house to record a voice memo on my ipod so that no one in my family could hear me. I don’t think I played one of my songs for anyone until I was 12 or 13. At that point, I had written a few albums worth of songs (not that they were any good, but still), and I finally worked up the courage to play for my friends. In November of my 8th grade year, when we had election day off from school, I invited my closest friends over to my house for a show in my living room that I called Project Red Notebook. I called it that because I pretty much only write songs in composition notebooks, and all the songs I had written for that gathering I had written in my red composition notebook. A tradition was born—every year after that until I released the EP, I would gather my closest friends and play them the songs I had written that year. It was only fitting that the name of my first project that I released was for the first live performances I did for the world.

The songs on Project Red Notebook are little high school time capsules for me. The first song, “Black Hightops” was the first successful love song I wrote that didn’t feel completely cheesy. It’s about how the boy I had a crush on was wearing black hightops, and I had black hightops, so obviously we were meant to be. I love that song because it perfectly captures the little butterflies you get when you have a crush on someone.

The second song, “I’m So Sorry,” which my friend Leo Critchfield played piano on, is about feeling used for your body. It was my first experience with hookup culture and with someone wanting to be with me not because of who I am, but for physical reasons. It was a really upsetting and confusing experience, and made me feel completely worthless. Thus, “I’m So Sorry” was written.

The third song, “Loverboy” sounds absolutely hilarious to me now, but I LOVE it. I wrote it after my first on and off relationship about a guy who was all over the place with what he wanted and was just taking me along for the ride. The fourth song, “Feelings,” is about making irrational decisions because of someone I had a crush on and all the resulting “Feelings” that were controlling my brain.

The final song on the project, “Summer 17,” is about my experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID hit during March of my junior year of high school, and as a result, the rest of my junior year and most of my senior year of high school were done remotely. My friends and I hung out almost everyday that summer, but outside and from six feet away. It was not exactly what we had pictured for our coming of age years. I wrote “Summer 17” about the sadness of feeling like we were losing those important years of our lives because of the pandemic. I ended up singing it at my high school graduation in June of 2021, when we were finally all together in person again.