Erin Lunsford Rebuffs Expectations & Constraints On “Everybody Else”
If there’s one thing the internet age has brought, it’s an endless cycle of comparison with your peers and colleagues, daily (hourly?) reminders of their triumphs and progress that inevitably make you feel less than. You can see it in your everyday life, with vacation pictures from acquaintances that remind you that you haven’t traveled in years or cooking tips from neighbors that scold you for ordering take-out an extra night this week. Look at it from the perspective of a musician and it becomes even more daunting and disheartening with endless prompts and nudges reminding you to post on this platform and sign-up for this service. It’s enough to make anyone go crazy, but the best artists always find a way to turn that inner chaos into something cathartic and liberating. That’s exactly what singer-songwriter Erin Lunsford has done with “Everybody Else,” a new striking song described as a “venting moment” that she also recorded a performance for as an entry for NPR’s Tiny Desk series.
“Because everybody else/ Has a better story/ Everybody else/ Is way more compelling/ Oh I can’t help but feel so boring ’round you” Lunsford sings in the chorus, moving between octaves as she zeroes in on this insufficient feeling. Of course, the lyrics stem from her real-world experiences where promoting yourself as an artist is harder and more time-consuming than ever, but it still holds resonance no matter your background. Life is hard enough without constantly seeing others doing exactly what you want to do better, even if you realize that “better” is a subjective term. The rate social media puts things in front of our eyes and ears doesn’t give our brains time to take our own biases and perceptions into consideration. All we see is an endless scroll of people doing what we want to do in a way we wish we could, and it’s just taxing. Lunsford brilliantly taps into this feeling in the song as well as the video, which places the powerful singer with a guitar and microphone in front of color-coded bookshelves which feel like they could have been lifted from a Wes Anderson film.
Lunsford’s last album The Damsel was released in 2020, though she has kept busy as the frontwoman for Erin & The Wildfire, who released Touchy Feely last year which went on to be nominated for the 2023 Newlin Music Prize. More recently, she collaborated with prolific producer Ant The Symbol on the “Silver, Gold And Cream” single recently, a song that will be one of the cornerstones of the prolific producer’s upcoming album. For her solo work though, Lunsford has kept just as busy, releasing performance videos and social media clips for songs “I Wanna Feel It,” “Summer You Can Wait Your Turn,” and “How Long Will I Hold On,” all of which hopefully point to a new solo record on the horizon for the outstanding singer.
Watch the video for “Everybody Else” below and make sure to follow Erin Lunsford on social media for more news and updates.
