Alana Springsteen talks Tiny Desk concert, 'TWENTY SOMETHING' album, new era ahead of Pittsburgh show

Alana Springsteen grew up watching the Tiny Desk Concerts hosted by NPR, obsessing over the way artists arranged songs differently in the compact environment. So the country singer found it “surreal” when she got her opportunity to perform there in August.

”So when NPR tapped me to come do it, I lost my mind. I would say, to this day, it’s one of the coolest things I’ve gotten to do so far in my career,” Springsteen said. “And it was just fun getting with the guys and reinventing songs and approaching them a little differently, teasing some new music. But just walking into the space was so crazy. It’s one thing to see it your whole life growing up on a computer screen. It’s a different thing to walk in and realize how tiny it actually is, and I’ve never been intimidated by a desk, so that was pretty crazy.”

Springsteen and her band performed a stripped-down version of “ghost in my guitar,” her collaboration with Chris Stapleton, as well as an unreleased song “feels good,” among others.

“It’s such a unique experience, like you really have nothing to hide behind,” she said. “It’s all completely live, one take. … You’re just playing music as a band and delivering songs the most organic way possible, and I loved the opportunity to do that.”

She’ll get the chance for more live music soon, opening for former Florida Georgia Line star Tyler Hubbard’s tour, including a stop on Nov. 2 at the Roxian Theatre in McKees Rocks.

Springsteen is celebrating her 24th birthday today with the release of two new songs, “Cowboy” and “Hold My Beer,” fresh on the heels of last year’s “TWENTY SOMETHING” album. The intimate album, an exploration of her early 20s, is broken into three parts: messing it up, figuring it out and getting it right.

In a recent call from Nashville, Springsteen took a deeper dive into the album as well as her collaboration with DJ/producer Tiesto on “Hot Honey”:

For your “TWENTY SOMETHING” album, did you always have it in mind for it to be three different parts?

No, actually that was something that kind of revealed itself as I wrote. I remember writing the title track to “TWENTY SOMETHING.” I was at the beach with one of my favorite writers, Liz Rose. She has this incredible beach house that we sometimes escape to. It was me, her, Trannie Anderson and AJ Pruis, and I kind of walked into that week just ready to write what was on my heart, but we sat down and Liz looked at me and she was like, if there was one song you could write that would basically tell the world where you are in life and what you want to say in three minutes, what would that be? And I kind of sat with that for a second, and the first thing that came to me was this idea I started months earlier, just me and my piano. And it was called “twenty something,” but I hadn’t really had the guts to write it until that moment, because I just knew how special and important it could be.

But that was the perfect crew to get in with, and as the song just started falling out, the record started to make sense in my head, and so many of the songs that I had written over the past few years kind of fell into these different categories of things you go through in your 20s, and the wild roller coaster ride that is. A lot of times you’re making mistakes and getting things wrong and messing things up, and then sometimes you’re getting to know yourself more, and kind of fumbling your way through life and figuring yourself out. And then there are those moments where you feel like you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, living your purpose, and getting it right. So I kind of separated the songs into those categories after I wrote the title track, and I just wanted to take fans on that journey with me. It was an 18-song record, so that’s a lot of music, a lot of content to drop as a new artist, but this way I kind of got to release it in digestible bits and just take people along that ride with me the way I experienced it.

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Was there one of the songs that felt maybe more natural to write? Was there more material for the messing up era? If I look back on my early 20s, I think there’d be a lot more messing up than figuring it out or getting it right.

(laughs) There was definitely plenty of songs to pull from for messing it up, and I think for me, I’ve messed it up most when it comes to love and relationships. I just found myself falling for the wrong people, and kind of missing red flags and just repeating these patterns I was stuck in. So I definitely had a lot of break-up songs there. But it was also cool to see how many songs I had that really just taught me so much about myself. I think more than anything, “twenty something” was me getting to know myself, truly, for the first time.

Coming off of those relationships, I think I took a look at myself and realized that there was probably a reason that I was repeating these patterns and falling for the wrong people over and over again. And it’s because I was looking for something in them, some kind of validation that I wasn’t giving myself. So it kind of just encouraged me to go on this journey to get to know who I was truly, and I’m so grateful for that. My biggest thing is just hoping that the people that listen to this record have the courage to do the same thing, to go on that self-discovery journey, too.

A song like “You Don’t Deserve A Country Song,” it may be about one particular person but that relevance is probably universal to a lot of people.

(laughs) Exactly. It’s funny, sometimes at my live shows I’ll play that song and mid-song I’ll ask the crowd who thinks they have the worst ex, (laughs) and I’ll dedicate that bridge to whatever random ex in the moment. It’s just kind of a chance for everybody to let whatever they’re holding on to to go and forget about those people that brought you down and just focus on yourself and live in the moment.

It seems like it’s pretty important for you to be honest and authentic with your songwriting.

For sure, it’s the most important thing and honestly I don’t know another way to do it. I’ve been writing songs since I was 9 years old, and I think the reason that I fell in love with writing so much is because it gave me an outlet that I didn’t have anywhere else. I could say things in my music, through my songs, that I couldn’t say to my closest friends or my parents.

Still to this day I’ll write songs that help me have conversations in my real life that I don’t think I would have been able to have before, so it very much is like my diary. When I’m writing, when I’m working on a project, it kind of is representative of exactly where I’m at in life.

You’ve also been teasing a “new era.” Can people take hints from “Hot Honey?” Is that what you might be leaning toward in the future?

“Hot Honey” kind of came out of left field for me. I’ve always loved dance, EDM music. And when Tiesto reached out, I was like, oh my God, this is so cool. I fell in love with the song. And I definitely related to it. Like I’ve said, I’ve been known to set fire to my love life, quite literally, on a daily basis. (laughs) So I found a piece of myself in that song and I love any opportunity to get outside my comfort zone and try new things. And it was cool to infuse his song with a little bit of what I did and bring that to life.

And I go to do crazy things all over the world. But, you know, this next era for me is something I’ve been excited to get into for a long time. I think coming off of “twenty something,” really getting to know myself through that album, I felt more empowered, more confident than ever. And I told everybody walking into those first couple of writes that I was going into my (Bob) Dylan era. I was like, watch out. Here she comes, like, this is my Dylan era. And the funny thing is I walked into those first writes and came out with the softest, heartfelt love songs I’ve ever written. So the music always finds a way to surprise me, but I think something I’ve learned writing this record is that sometimes being strong means staying soft.

And love can take you on a ride. It can take you really high, and it can take you the lowest you’ve ever been. And I think it’s easy to start to put up those walls and try to protect yourself from it, and I found myself going a little bit numb and losing that side of myself, losing that romantic side of myself. This is kind of like a challenge to stay soft and not give up on love just because it’s broken you a couple times, but to learn the lessons and realize that there’s something so much better meant for you out there.

There’s so many different sides on this album, like there’s the vulnerable, there’s bold, there’s fun, there’s flirty, sexy, and it really is just super representative of my personality, and I can’t wait to just uncover those new layers with my fans and see how everybody reacts to it.