Pop and alternative rock: A 17-year-old musician from Golden Valley just released her first extended play (EP). There are six alternative rock/pop songs on the EP. For Brooke, songwriting is incredibly personal.
“I feel like it’s my form of journaling and figuring out how I feel,” Brooke told Sun Newspapers. “Or if I don’t wanna talk about my feelings to somebody, I always have a pen and a piece of paper and my guitar and it all kind of comes out and helps me figure out how I’m feeling about certain things.”
Some of the songs are autobiographical.
“Dark Blue” is “about wanting somebody to be the person that they are at 3 a.m.,” Brooke explained.
“It’s about having false hope for someone and wanting them to be more than what they are.”
Brooke said she started writing “Half and Half” when she was in a relationship, “threw it in a drawer” and wrote the second half after the breakup.
“So I liked that the writing experience and the song were kind of the same, cut in half,” Brooke said of “Half and Half.”
“I Hate My Guitar,” features the line “I hate my guitar/ because it writes about you.”
“It’s about [when] a person makes you hate all of your favorite things,” Brooke said. “I remember I would sit down with my guitar and all I could write about was this person and it just made me hate my guitar.”
Another song is “The Dripping Moon.”
Brooke said it was about when she spent a lot of time with someone and then they had to leave for the summer.
“I was kind of in denial about how I felt, I was acting like I didn’t care. ‘They miss me so much more.’ And then the song kind spirals into me breaking down and realizing I care way more than I thought I did.”
Some of the songs were created simply to evoke a feeling.
“You’re My Summer” is an upbeat song Brooke wrote in eighth grade. Though there’s no real-life ‘muse’ for the song, it talks about an awesome relationship.
“State Lines” is about traveling west on a road trip. Originally, “State Lines” was two songs before Brook put it into one.
Brooke said it’s “a song my friends and I like to blast in the car.”
Brooke also released a single called "Haven’t Seen You Since" in 2022.
Her family is quite supportive of her music. Brooke’s grandmother was the one who taught her how to play piano, where she wrote her first song at age 10 about being bored. Today Brooke’s mother, Kristen Brown, is her manager.
“It’s challenging because being a manager you have to focus on the business side of it, and the nuts and bolts,” Kristen said. “But then as her mom I wanna make sure that her feelings and her mental health and her physical health are all taken care of. So it’s a unique combination of balancing those two. And I’m a solo parents - her dad died when she was just a baby. So not having the other half of it to balance me out is interesting.”
In her day job, Kristen has her own business as a motivational speaker at kristenbrownpresents.com .
So far, Brooke has played at HopeFest Music Festival, Minnesota State Fair Semi Finals, Twin Cities Live TV and several open mics. She plans to play at many more events.
“I feel like it’s just kinda the beginning,” Brooke said about her music career, adding that she’s “excited to see where it goes.”
In the fall, Brooke will start her senior year of high school at Robbinsdale Armstrong. She hopes to study business and music in college.
Learn more about Brooke Brown and find links to music, merch and performances at brookebrownmusic.com . Reach out to Kristen Brown at 612-618-1808 for booking details.
Most Popular
Comments / 0