If HAIM & Shania Twain got together to make music, it’s sonic sister would be Hayley Marsten’s new single, “Drowning Myself” released today (October 8th). No stranger to the ‘sad banger’, Hayley has bared her heartbreak to her audience many times before but no song in her back catalogue compares in vulnerability. The first new offering from the singer-songwriter since her Alt-Country Album of the Year nominated album, “Spectacular Heartbreak”.
After her spectacular 2019, spent touring her album, charming the crowds of Fanny Lumsden and Troy Cassar-Daley and receiving hundreds of thousands of streams, plays and playlisting’s on commercial and country radio stations. 2020 was a stark difference. Like most of the entertainment industry, Hayley found herself homebound. Not only that she found herself grappling with her self-worth without performing, which had been tied so intrinsically together, having one taken away felt like both were gone.
About the realisation that sometimes the only person who can pull you out of the deep end is the one who threw you in, you. “Drowning Myself is the sadness I thought I would never explore, my own mental health”. Hayley spent her early years as a songwriter as a Taylor Swift fan, being schooled in how to write a hook from the heart and genre bend with the best of them. And it shows on “Drowning Myself”, taking the best parts of her alt-country roots and sparkling power-pop all over them.
“In some ways this song feels like a huge departure for me. But in reality this is the most me that has ever been in a song”. It might feel like a different approach but the stellar songwriting is unchanged in this song, the heartbreak kid now delves deeper into herself to try to quell the pain. This release marks Marsten’s first as a co-producer with the powerhouse production team of Dan Sugars and ARIA Award Winner Magoo (Reguritator, Kate Miller-Heidke, Powderfinger).
This single marks a step into a new era for her as an artist but also her emerging from her darkest place with her grief spun into gold.