Abbey Cone has recently released her first album, Greener, something she's been trying to do for a long time. It was revealed to us, however, that the heart-wrenching songs were mostly written before her breakup.
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Most heartbreak songs are written after the event that broke the heart. For Abbey Cone's Greener, an album about the end of a long-term relationship, this isn't the case.
When I listened to the album myself, I believed Abbey was penning her emotions into songs as she went through them. Her songs made me feel like I was in her head with her as she grappled with the thoughts and feelings the breakup put her through.
But, unbelievably, most were written while she was still in the relationship.
In an interview with Abbey Cone, she said, "Songs like 'I Hate Springsteen'... I didn't write that song about anyone, I wrote that song while I was still in a relationship."
I was taken aback.
One Of Abbey Cone's Songs Ended Up Coming True
"I feel like a lot of my songs end up being self-fulfilling prophecies," she said. "I feel like I live, or I write from a more honest place than I live."
She compared the writing process as therapeutic. "Every day in Nashville, people go into these rooms, and it's like therapy. You just start telling the truth to people, and what's going on in your life. And then you leave the room, I kind of like, go back to not being as honest with myself," she reflected.
This is especially true for one of my favorites, "worse case scenario." Now that is a song I expected to have been made after the breakup. But it wasn't. Strangely, however, the 'worst case scenarios' she listed ended up coming true when her boyfriend of 6 years later broke up with her.
"I had to call my mum, and I had to rent an apartment. It's a weird experience listening to songs that I wrote years before the thing actually happened," Abbey Cone said.
"Looking back now, it kind of trips me out how many things came true."
When constructing the album, any songs she wrote before the breakup were slot into place to better reflect her own healing journey.
"Video Games" is a song that was made only "three days" after the breakup. There was "completely real-time processing" when writing that song. "There was no hindsight yet, that was me actually, completely in it."
It's such a testament to her writing ability that she can write these songs despite being in an at-the-time happy relationship. I still can't really wrap my head around "worst case scenario" being written before her breakup, though.
Thinking about it, maybe it was a sign.
