Taylor Acorn Gets Honest About Mental Health and “Shapeshifting” to Pop-Punk
Taylor Acorn via Press 2022
If Hayley Williams, Avril Lavigne, Taylor Swift, and the guys from Mayday Parade got together and somehow all concocted a child, you’d have Taylor Acorn – rising pop-punk singer-songwriter based out of Nashville whose path to the genre differs from most artists. Having started out in the industry making country music since 2016, when it came down to it, Taylor Acorn was “just a girl still stuck in her 2007 emo phase.” In early 2020, Acorn began releasing covers of songs by Mayday Parade, Paramore, and Panic! At The Disco, turning iconic pop-punk songs into acoustic ballads and capturing the attention of music fans on TikTok and Instagram. Now riding the waves of her covers going viral, Acorn is only just beginning her pop-punk career.
The artist's brand new single, “Shapeshifting,” steps away from her traditional guitar and vocal tracking, and breaks into the emo-rocker vibe we all know and love, lyrically addressing both anxiety and honesty in that signature, raw, pop-punk way. “Wrote this song about my own mental health struggles & how hard it is to fake happy,” Acorn says of the new release on TikTok. As a follow up to Acorn’s EP, Stay Emo, Pt. 1, “Shapeshifting,” as well as her previously released single “In My Head” from earlier this year proves not only Acorn’s ability to write, perform, and execute in the pop-punk genre, but that she’s exactly where she belongs.
Immersing herself in the scene community, Acorn recently played at Emo Night Nashville where 1500 artists and hundreds of pop-punk fans showed up to celebrate a night of nostalgia and music. “There was an emo tribute band," Acorn says, "Then we got up and sang – It was like karaoke!”
Taylor Acorn is now prepping to play at Emo Night Brooklyn in LA this summer, but not before she opened up to Amplify Her Voice about the story behind her song, what makes pop-punk feel most like herself, and how she navigates being a woman artist in a heavily male-dominated genre.
Congratulations on "Shapeshifting," – the song is awesome. How does it feel to have it out in the world?
Taylor Acorn: It’s really exciting. That was the one song that, after writing it, I was like, “Wow, I really love this.” Now that it’s out in the world, and people have been loving it, it makes me happy because I think it’s my favorite song that I’ve put out so far.
Can you talk about the story behind the song? Where did these tense, angsty feelings come from?
I’ve struggled for a very long time with my mental health. As a kid, it can be really scary to think some of the thoughts that you do or feel the things you do. I’ve always felt like I didn’t really fit in, and so the idea behind “Shapeshifting” is molding yourself to feel comfortable in situations that you might not feel comfortable in - and it’s not even feeling comfortable for yourself, it’s making other people around you feel comfortable. I’ve felt that way in a lot of situations. I don’t know if it’s social anxiety, but I’ve always felt like I’ve had to think really hard in situations to not misstep or say the wrong thing, and I’ve always dealt with that so that was the idea behind this song – to let people know that if they do feel this way or if they do feel like they’re constantly having to pretend to be happy to appease other people, whether it’s for the sake of their job or the sake of their family, it’s okay to resonate with those feelings, and not have to be okay all the time. I just hope that when people listen to the song that’s kind of what they feel and hear in my own story.
You mentioned your mental health. For any creative person, protecting your mental health is important because if you don’t, then there’s no way you can pull from your emotions to keep creating art. What are some ways that you protect your mental health as an artist?
One big thing nowadays is trying not to read comments on social media because I’ve been very blessed with fans that are very supportive of me, and up until the last year, I was kind of at a steady state with my career, so I don’t think I ever really experienced a ton of hate, which is weird, but now that I’ve been putting myself out there on TikTok and Reels and things like that, that’s one thing that I do notice. People, just for the sake of saying it, will comment on my face or my voice or what I’m wearing or my hair or my attitude, and that, at first, when it started to happen on a bigger scale, really started to get to me, and there were a lot of times where I would just sit and cry and wanna delete everything and quit music, so now, whenever I post something out there that I’m proud of, I just leave my phone down and don’t look at the comments as much. That was one thing that was pretty detrimental for me, and it’s still something that I know will happen more often, but I just try to block it out and take a lot of time for myself. Go outside, get fresh air, go work out. I also like to talk to people too so I go see a counselor and she definitely helps me through a lot of the emotions I deal with being an artist. It’s mostly just trying to take time for myself.
Everything you mentioned – comments about your hair or your face or your attitude – That’s such a thing for women artists for people to comment on your appearance before even acknowledging the music that you make. Have you experienced any other roadblocks as a woman artist in the punk genre, and if so, how do you push through?
I think every woman experiences these roadblocks, especially if they’re an artist. I really just try to keep my head down and ignore it. The right people who want to follow me and believe in what I have to say - whether they’re male or female - will find their way to me. I also have a competitive nature, and so when someone tells me, "No," I view that as a challenge in a weird way. I think of it as like, "You might not want to hear what I have to say now, but I’m going to make you hear what I have to say one day." So I think about it from that perspective, and I try not to let that side of the music industry get to me. At the end of the day, I’m an artist, and what I love to do is put out art, and nobody’s really going to stop me from doing that. I just try to keep to myself, write the best I can, connect with people the best I can, and hope that it all just finds its way through.
On the topic of “Shapeshifting,” I wanted to spend some time talking to you about your switch from country music to pop-punk. What was it about country music that drew you to the genre at first, and what about pop-punk makes you feel the most like yourself?
I grew up on a lot of early 90s country so we would listen to a lot of Garth Brooks, The Chicks, Alan Jackson, and Sarah McLaughlin. I always really loved the storytelling of the early country, and Garth Brooks is a huge one for me because anytime I would listen to his songs, I could feel what he was saying. His storytelling and the presentation in his songs were so fascinating to me, and even though I kind of fell away from country for a while, I would always resort to singing country songs at talent shows and things like that, like doing a Carrie Underwood or Taylor Swift song just because it felt like home to me. Sometimes we think of our hometowns and we’re like “Ugh, I don’t wanna go back,” but for me, it was the one genre where I knew I was comfortable. So that was kind of why I started to do country music in the first place, it was kind of like a comfort blanket for me, and it was something that I already knew how to write, and it was kind of like a “hometown.” You know all the streets in your hometown so you feel comfortable going through them, and when I first started, it was exciting because you go from writing songs in your bedroom to writing songs with bigger artists, which was amazing, but other than that, I didn’t know anything about the industry or the genre as a whole so that leads into my pop-punk side.
When I was in high school, I found my way to pop-punk because I think the writing stylings of country and pop-punk are very similar. The storytelling is told in two completely different sounds but as far as the writing goes, you could pretty much take any country song that’s not about trucks and beer and put it to pop-punk music, and it would be a pop-punk song. When people started making songs about mental health, when it was more relational - as an early teen, I resonated with that so much more because I was feeling those things and I didn’t know how to process it. I didn’t know how to talk about what I was feeling so in the same sense, I’d just listen to it and it was like therapy for me. Growing up too, as a millennial, talking about mental health was frowned upon, and I think it’s because, for a lot of our parents, they had to suck it up and bury it. There was no time to feel sad, and so I would feel all these emotions but not really know how to process them, but once I heard A Lesson In Romantics by Mayday Parade, I was like, “These guys get me. This is how I feel.” So that’s always been the music and genre of choice that I’ve listened to, up until now.
There’s such a stigma around genre-shifting for artists, especially for women. When Taylor Swift released, “Shake It Off,” everyone accused her of not being country, and now she's the biggest pop artist in the world. Did you ever come across any hesitation when making your switch or was it more of you deciding to make music that more like who you actually are?
When I first started doing the covers, like the "Jamie All Over" cover, I would see a lot of comments that would say, “This is country,” and people were just associating the sound with country even though it was just a guitar and my vocal. At that point, I wanted to switch to pop-punk but I wasn’t sure. I had built a fan base in the country space, and I was very afraid of losing those fans because I have an amazing following of people who are just so kind. They really care about each other and they care about me, and I was really worried about losing that because I know that pop-punk isn’t really everyone’s cup of tea. It might be more prevalent now, but I remember when it really wasn’t cool at the time to listen to it. So I did have a lot of nerves when it did come time to making the decision. I teetered with the idea of trying to do the in-between, like an emo-country, y’alternative kind of vibe, where you could hear hints of both genres, but the more that I thought about that I was like, "There is a chance that this could work, but there is also a chance that it couldn’t."
For me in the country space, I never really felt like I belonged there so even though my voice fit and I was comfortable writing this style of music, it wasn’t me. It was like the hometown thing. It’s hard to leave because you know all the backroads and great places to eat, and all your friends are there. I think I was just coating it with excuses, but now that I’ve fully diverged myself into the space I’ve wanted to be in for so many years, I can’t remember what it was like then. The energy now is just so different. They’re just two completely different places so when it came to deciding pop-punk is what I wanted to do, I had already thought about it for a while. I think now I’m in the right direction of where I’m needing to be.
Between your singles, “Shapeshifting” and “In My Head,” which is also a banger, who are a few artists that inspire your sound right now?
Whenever I explain what I sound like, I will usually say a mix of if Taylor Swift, Hayley Williams, Avril Lavigne, and Mayday Parade all concocted a child — that’s me!
Since going viral with your covers and now your original music on TikTok and Instagram, what do you feel like is the biggest thing social media has taught you when it comes to sharing who you are as an artist online?
Just to be 110% confident in who you are. There are gonna be a bunch of people who won’t like your work, but in the middle of all the bad comments that make you wanna throw your phone across the room and quit music completely, there will be a handful of comments from people who really really love what you do. Don’t let small-minded opinions change who you are and what you love. That’s kind of what I’ve been learning through social media, which has been such an incredible tool, I will say. I would have never thought in a million years that I’d be a “TikToker.” That never occurred to me at all so it’s just amazing to me that there’s an app where someone can literally find your music and thousands of people want to be a part of your journey.
What can you tell us about your future projects? Maybe Stay Emo Part 2?
A Stay Emo Part 2 is coming, I just don’t know when yet! I’ve been in the studio working so hard on the new music and just trying to get it as perfect as I can. Coming from the country scene and now doing something completely different, I want to come into this full force with the message of, “This is who I am. This my music.” There’s gonna be a bunch of new music coming out within the next few months, and a tour this Fall which you will hear about soon! I’m so excited!