The Malibu Sessions

When I came out 10 years ago I was so new at songwriting. Honestly the songs on my first album “Coco” were the first songs I had ever written. There weren’t extras. That was the first time I had written songs and those were what made my album and those were actually the demo. And so every album after that I really got to experiment with new sounds and new styles and work with amazing producers and meet new writers. And collaborating is really fun. It’s great to learn as a songwriter from other writers. For this last album, I really wanted to take it in a direction that was inspired by Paul Simon and his record “Graceland” which he went to Africa to record and he had the local musicians playing these unique, insane instruments and these incredible background vocals and harmonies. And that’s what the whole record was about. And so I’ve always loved harmonies, I’ve always loved acoustic music, and classic rock, and so I went full that direction with this album and was inspired by that.

— via TheVault (2016)