IT’S HERE!!!
I am SO excited to announce that my BRAND NEW EP Nashville Songwriting Sessions is out! It has five new songs, and it’s available everywhere to listen to, stream and download now!
Listen on iTunes/Apple Music HERE
Listen on Spotify HERE
Listen on SoundCloud HERE
If you want a signed physical copy of my new EP, you can email me at [email protected] or message me on my Claudia Norris Music Etsy shop HERE, and I can get one (or 10 lol!) out to you ASAP!
This EP has been in the works for longer than I’d like to admit, but I couldn’t be more proud of these songs or this new EP. Good things take time haha! I recorded vocals for Say Yes and Stay at my producer Jason Wyatt’s home studio. The music for Stay was all done at Jason’s home studio as well. I recorded vocals and music for Stranger and Heartbeat at Watershed Studios in Nashville, and we also did the music for Say Yes there. We only spent a day in the studio recording all of the components of those songs, and it was a loooong day but such a fun one! I have some video footage from that day as well, which I’ll be sharing on social media over the next few weeks! Make sure you’re following me on Instagram and Facebook so you don’t miss when those clips go up!
I was originally going to release all these songs as singles, but I didn’t love the idea of coming out with 4-5 singles. I’m an EP kinda musician haha! But since they all sounded different and had a different vibe from each other, I didn’t think they could work on an EP. My mom was actually the one who sparked the idea of the title, I was telling her how most of the songs were co-writes and that the all of them were written in Nashville. She said I should call it “The Nashville Songbook” but I thought songbook sounded kind of old-school. So I decided to call it Nashville Songwriting Sessions and I’m so happy with how that came together!
Since it is called Nashville Songwriting Sessions I thought I’d talk a little bit about how each of these songs was written, and give you some more insight into how these new songs came to be.
Say Yes
Say Yes was the first song I wrote for this EP, and actually the EP Single! I put up this post talking about the single, and it’s one of my favorite songs on the EP. I started writing the first verse in Edmonton after I had come home from living in Los Angeles at Christmas when my grandparents were sick. (If you’ve been following me since my LA days thank you!!) I actually google mapped how long the drive back to LA is, and it’s 24 hours, which is how the line “if we left right now, drove all night we’d be there tomorrow” came about. I wrote the first verse here in Edmonton but didn’t know how to finish the song. So I took that verse into my very first Nashville writing session with Jason Wyatt and Mason Douglas. I played it for them and they both really enjoyed it, and we finished the song in a few hours! It has a bit of that LA ocean, chill vibe, but also a hint of country to pay homage to where the song was written!
Stranger
Stranger is *probably* my favorite song on this EP… I don’t like to play favorites because all my songs are my little babies but if I had to choose it would be this song. I co-wrote it with my good friend Stacy Stone in Nashville, and she told me about how she had just seen her ex in a bar and realized that she had no idea who that person was anymore, even though they had once been such a big part of her life. She told me that it was like looking at a stranger, and I said that was the song we had to write. This song is definitely my “ballad” song, and I think that everyone can connect with the feeling of seeing someone who you used to be so close to, but now having them feel like a stranger… an ex, an ex bff, etc. I had such a good time in the studio with this song too, I came up with a bunch of the piano parts, and it only took a few vocal takes to get what you now hear on the album!
Heartbeat & Stay
I’m lumping these two songs together because I wrote both of them in my hotel room in Nashville while I was putting together ideas for my upcoming writing sessions. Sometimes when a song idea comes to me it literally just flows out. That’s what happened with Heartbeat. I started with this fun simple, pop-y chorus and then finished with the verses and bridge! In the studio, we decided we really wanted it to sound almost like it was do-whop from the 60’s, Meghan Trainor’s music style was a huge influence for me with this track. I think it turned out so fun, and it’s a cute way of telling someone you miss them and realize you want them back.
Stay was also written in my hotel room, and I really love this song too. We recorded it as a pretty traditional country songwriter song, with strong guitars and making the vocals and lyrics the main focus. I love a good love song, and I really just wanted a simple, calm track with raw lyrics. It’s a simple track, and I love it for that reason. It’s one I sing live a lot, and it currently is starred on iTunes, so you guys are loving it too!! 🙂
Love On Replay
Love On Replay was a song I co-wrote with Ben Picker. We wrote, recorded vocals and music at his home studio in Nashville. We wanted the song to have lots of music references, so we literally had a list going during the songwriting session of tons of different musical things! iPods, CD’s, records, melodies, it was a really fun song to write. Again, I love a good pop love song and in my opinion, this is one! We wanted lots of techno beats, and easy lyrics, so hopefully it gets “stuck in your head all day like “eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh!” 😉
I put together a little EP mashup of all the songs on this album, and I also made a lyric video for the mashup! If you’d like to listen to a sample of each song, watch my video below!
All the photos for this EP were done by Janine Rose Photography, and I am so thrilled with how they turned out! I love the darker vibe this album has, and that’s thanks to Janine’s great photo skills! If you want more info about the photography side of the album, click HERE!
Let me know in the comments or in a tweet which song from the new album is your FAVE!! I’d LOVE to know! Thank you so much for your support of my music, listening, downloading, streaming, sharing with your family and friends, adding a song of mine to your playlist, or blasting it in your car… it all helps so much and makes me so happy. And if you haven’t listened to my new album yet, I would love if you did!!