DROOL: During the COVID-19 lockdown you recorded your debut album, which comes out this fall. Tell us a little bit about your writing and recording process.
Cynthia: There’s a song on the album that’s seven years old, and there’s a song on the album that is three or four years old, but a lot of it I wrote during quarantine over Zoom. I recorded everything, re-vocaled everything in my house or in the house I was filming at in Atlanta. Every song is a link to who I am, the people I’ve met, the people I love, and what I’ve been through. It all starts with a melody. Someone plays something until they find a melody that sticks to me, and when it sticks, I’ll just ask them to keep playing it over and over again. That melody usually gives me the lyrics for the top line, or the lyrics for the verse… verse or chorus, I can’t tell you which comes first, it depends on the day. Sometimes a song tells me that I need a bridge, sometimes it tells me that I don’t need a bridge; it always depends on the day. There’s a song that I wrote in an hour and 15 minutes, and no song took more than three hours to write. I don’t know why… maybe it’s because I’m impatient. It’s also because when I get an idea, it comes almost fully formed, and I don’t want to leave the space until I’m finished. I know what I’m writing about. I know the story I’m trying to tell. I just have to find the words to tell it.
