Kali Uchis pours her heart into new album ‘Sincerely,'
'I really did make the music that I needed for my grieving process, for just the place that I'm at in my life right now,' she says of the album out Friday.
'Sincerely,' (yes, the title includes the comma) began as a collection of letters to herself, friends and loved ones but took on a deeper meaning as the Colombian American songwriter gave birth to her first child and processed her mother's recent death. The first single, 'Sunshine & Rain…,' includes a clip of Uchis' mother saying, 'Good morning, sunshine.'
'I wanted to immortalize her in the project,' said Uchis. 'I thought it was just a beautiful way to open the album.'
The 14-track album finds Uchis proudly wearing her heart on her sleeve with songs like 'Daggers!,' where Uchis encourages a close friend to lean into self-love, or 'ILYSMIH,' which includes baby coos at the beginning and was written as she lay in her hospital bed with her newborn.
Uchis hopes that after listening to her fifth full album, fans will feel more connected to themselves and more in touch with their emotions: 'I hope it will give them some type of solace.'
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
AP: When you decided to step into this album and encompass that world of tenderness and strength, what was your thought process of the themes that you wanted to follow?
UCHIS: I'm a very deep feeler. I'm very empathetic. I feel a lot. And I wanted to make a body of work that fully showed that vulnerability and that actually really dug deep into my heart in a way that none of my other albums ever had.
I felt like I was ready to do that because I've been making music long enough that I felt that it was that time for me, and then it just so happened that, shortly after working on the album, I became pregnant, which was such a big part of being able to feel even deeper than I ever have.
AP: How was working on this album healing for you?
UCHIS: It's crazy because a lot of times I feel, and especially with this album in particular, I felt that I really made music that my future self would need, that I didn't realize I was going to need at that time.
The album is actually dedicated to my mom. My mom later ended up getting diagnosed, and she's no longer here. … And so pretty much all of the songs ended up taking on a deeper meaning to me because of that and because of it being dedicated to her. … At the time, I might not have even realized subconsciously that I was making all of this to heal myself.
AP: Is that how you got to the title 'Sincerely,'?
UCHIS: At one point, I was like, 'I'm gonna make sure each of these songs is like, this is my letter to the world, this is my letter to this person, this my letter to that, this one to myself.' I tried to really conceptualize in a different way that I never have when making any other album. And then … when my mom passed, a lot of what I had left from her is letters that she wrote to me, and so it ended up, like I said, just more and more reasons for me to realize that it was the correct title for the project.
AP: When you are in that studio space by yourself, what comes first? Is it the melody? Is it the lyrics? How did you specifically craft this album?
UCHIS: I never stick to one process, but one particular process that stuck out to me on a lot of the songs was that most of them were written with no music, just songs that came to me.
For instance, 'ILYSMIH' — that one literally I was just recovering from labor, my son was sleeping next to me; I was still in my hospital bed when I got this idea for this song and started it, started recording it on my phone, started writing some lyrics down. … There's one called 'All I Can Say.' I wrote that whole song in the car on the way to the studio. … I try to just make beauty out of all of my experiences.
AP: Fans online were saying 'Sunshine and Rain' is the answer to 'After the Storm.' Do you agree with that and if so how does it feel to now, five albums later, do you agree with the correlation?
UCHIS: Thematically, nature is kind of a reoccurring theme in my music because I am so inspired by nature and I feel nature is where God exists and nature is where a lot of my creativity just thrives.
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I feel like it just happened. Afterwards, I even thought, 'Is this too similar to what I've already done?' But … I just love the things that I love, and I just returned back to those nostalgic elements. I may branch out and try what people think is different sounds. Like on 'Orquídeas,' I did a lot of different genre-bending on 'Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios)' as well, but to me, that's still nostalgic because it's still music I grew up listening to.
I return a lot to things that are core memories for me. It's soothing to my nervous system. I'm the person who watches the same episodes of my favorite TV shows over and over again, … I think that's what makes it beautiful too, is to see the evolution and know that it's still true to me. It's still true to my roots in music and where I started, but an evolved version.
AP: What does that mean to you to have your mother's voice be a part of the album?
UCHIS: After she passed, one of the first things I did was go through all of the audio messages that she had ever sent me and I was just listening to all her messages over and over, wanting to hear her voice. When I heard that one I just thought of, 'Oh how perfect is this that the song is called 'Sunshine &Rain…,' and she had said, 'Good morning, sunshine.' It was for my son that she sent that message. I thought it was just a beautiful way to open the album, considering that it's dedicated to her.
I struggled a lot with whether or not I wanted to share because I'm a very, very private person. So I struggled a lot with if I even wanted to share that my mom was no longer here, but I felt I just had to not be afraid of that vulnerability and not pretend like it didn't affect me or didn't have some type of impact on me when it had such a big impact on me and still does. And I wanted to also honor her and honor her life in a way through art that I know that she would have loved and that she would have been proud of.
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