by Joe Vickrey
Photos By: Clark Clifford // Hair and Makeup: Rachel Clark // Executive Producer: Celene Anderson // Creative Directors: Walter McClenton & Zach Collier // Videographers: Noah Richmond, Aaron Hinton // Photography Assistant: Harrison Trinca // Clothing Sponsors: Hive & Pines (Baseball Cap), Curly Fries Closet (Floral Socks) // Shot at The FIND Lab
Fresh off of a four hour flight and well past anyone’s bed time, Caroline Romano did not have a negative thing to say. For someone who describes herself as “an anti-therapist,” she couldn’t have been more enjoyable to be around.
Caroline flew out from Nashville with her guitarist Austin Acuff to play some songs from her new EP, How the Good Girls Die, for the tmrw crew. As our conversation shifted from pleasantries to a question about some of her music, she joked: “If you’re not doing well, I don’t know if you should listen to my music.”
Caroline Romano sits at the intersection of pop, rock, and painfully intimate songwriting. From being “full of rage and diet drinks” to asking “Do you think I’m just so sad and pretty like an actress from the 50s?” Caroline’s lyrics are filled with clever and witty notes as they tackle the matters of the heart.
What surprised me the most is that she typically doesn’t stew on these lyrics, but rather writes mostly from a stream of consciousness. Caroline shared, “You'll often see me on my phone just writing random thoughts that are nonsensical if they're just read through.” She went on to explain that as she enters the studio, her notes begin to take shape into full-fledged songs during the recording process. That has to be the purest form of allowing inspiration to flow, because the idea of entering a studio with the pressure of needing to write and finish a song without anything formal prepared is beyond me.
The first thing I noticed as we dove into her introspective, self-doubting new collection of songs is how much her words contrast with her melodies. The vocals on her new EP soar even as she exclaims she’s sinking. And to hear her perform these songs in a stripped back session? Unreal. Without any warm up, and operating on nothing more than a 12-pack of coconut water, she simply stated, “I’m going to lock in,” before she completely tore the studio down with a brilliant performance.
After a flawless first take, she leaned over to Austin with a quick note about the arrangement of the chorus, he nodded, and then she did it again. Lightning struck twice. Thrice. Between the three songs, she didn’t miss a single note. Needless to say, she did in fact lock in.
When I asked her about it later, sitting on a bench in the photo gallery of our downtown production space, she simply shrugged and with a smile said, “The more I overthink it, the worse it gets.”
When I asked her about it later, sitting on a bench in the photo gallery of our downtown production space, she simply shrugged and with a smile said, “The more I overthink it, the worse it gets.”
These were all new songs that didn’t even have the final arrangements solidified, yet her performance was perfectly sculpted. My own mental crisis of not realizing someone could sing that perfectly only slightly overshadowed my joy in hearing it live, but I had to wonder: how did it all begin for Caroline Romano?
As we ate kolaches, Caroline shared how she was a shy kid. She found that music allowed her to express herself from a very young age. After watching a Taylor Swift documentary where Taylor mentions having got her start by playing at the Bluebird Café open mic in Nashville, Caroline’s mind was made up. She begged her parents to drive her from her hometown in Mississippi to Nashville to follow suit. Supportive of an oddly specific request, her parents agreed, and helped her start her journey.
Only a few years after her Bluebird Café debut, Caroline is now a Nashville mainstay, and one of the scene’s perpetual writers. When she’s not working on her own music, she’s likely to be found in and out of studios co-writing for other artists.
“Having a project is very fulfilling for me, because I feel like I write in chapters.”
Starting her own new chapter, Caroline considers How the Good Girls Die to be the beginning of a new era for her music. “My growing up has been very clearly documented through the music I’ve put out... I’ve been through my emo-punk phase, pop, folk.” She went on to mention how she hopes to become the type of artist who isn’t seen as doing something derivative of a specific genre or artist. While I replied that I felt she was already doing something unique, I worried she’d remember me as the guy who tried to mansplain her music to her. She doesn't need any reassurance. This aim is built on a hunger for excellence, not insecurity.
We sat in the middle of the loud shuffle of tmrw’s photo team finishing their setup. Caroline quietly mentioned, “This EP is not at all sonically cohesive, and that's kind of on purpose… I just wanted to not listen to what anyone was telling me this should be. It’s just kind of what I'm feeling.”
This emotional honesty and vulnerability is a huge part of what makes her new EP so special. In the age of acting callous and flaunting excess, this is an intimate macro lens into the delicate imperfections of life.
The true duality of Caroline Romano is that her music is an autobiography of self-collapse, yet she’s brimming with confidence and couldn’t appear more put together. Her head is held high, and for good reason. “I woke up at 22 and realized that’s how the good girls die… by going out, meeting boys, falling in love, and having your heart broken.”
With true anti-therapist optimism, she added, “It’s not sad. I mean, it's just growing up.”
