Today’s spotlight artist has spent most of her life turning emotions into songs. We first chatted with Alana Springsteen back in 2020 and fell in love with her sound and her honesty. Since finding herself both in and outside of the music industry, the songstress is even more ready to take on the world.

Long before sold-out shows, touring, and releasing records, Springsteen was simply a young girl growing up in Pungo, Virginia, trying to make sense of the world around her. “It was this really cool cross section between surf culture, beach culture, laid-back feel meets farm culture,” shared the singer, when asked about her hometown just outside Virginia Beach.

At home, however, life was often more complicated. Both of her grandfathers were pastors, and she grew up heavily involved in church. At the same time, she describes her childhood home as being full of both love and challenges. “I was brought into this chaotic house full of a lot of love, but also a lot of unhealed emotions, a lot of unprocessed trauma,” she shared.

As a deeply empathetic child, Springsteen found herself carrying emotions she didn’t always know how to process. Music quickly became her outlet. “I picked up the guitar when I was seven years old, started playing, wrote my first song when I was nine,” she recalled. “It truly was the only place that I could make sense of what was going on in my head and my heart. It felt like the only way I could truly communicate with the world.”

Growing up in a musical household, the singer-songwriter was surrounded by music constantly. Her dad led worship, her nana played piano, and she found herself falling in love with country music at an early age. Artists like Faith Hill, Shania Twain, Sheryl Crow, and Carole King became early influences. “I gravitated toward country because of the storytelling,” she shared. “I found a piece of myself in those stories.”

The Turning Point:

By the time she was a child, Springsteen already knew exactly what she wanted to do. “There was never a plan B for me,” she admitted. After moving to Nashville with her family at fourteen years old, she quickly immersed herself in songwriting, signed her first publishing deal, and began building the foundation for the career she always dreamed of.

While Springsteen had always been open in her songwriting, her debut album, Twenty Something, marked the first time she truly began examining her own life through her music. Released a few years ago, the project explored everything from toxic relationships and anxiety to people-pleasing tendencies and self-discovery. Te songstress views that album as only the beginning of a much deeper journey.

“That record changed my life,” she shared. “It was really the first time that I started to look at my life kind of objectively and go, okay, where are things going wrong? What am I figuring out about myself?” Despite the accolades, something was missing. “I felt incredibly isolated, incredibly lonely,” she shared. “It almost felt like I was living two different lives.”

The singer-songwriter bravely decided to start therapy to release patterns that were no longer serving her and, yet, deeply ingrained in her. “I realized that to fix a lot of these issues that were coming up in my life, I had to go back a really long way to get to the root of it,” she shared.

A major turning point came during a late-night tour stop in Los Angeles. Alone in a hotel room at two in the morning, Springsteen opened her phone and began typing a list of fears, confessions, and truths she had never fully allowed herself to say out loud. “It was the first time that I had let myself be that honest,” she shared, adding, that although she though the next chapter would be full of confidence and upbeat songs, something else unfolded that night.

“I realized that this next season was going to require a very different kind of strength. It wasn’t going to be confident, badass strength. It was going to be strength in the form of vulnerability and softness.” That realization became the foundation for the album she would eventually create.

Today:

Flash forward to today, and Springsteen’s newest album, I Hope This Helps is officially out in the world, giving fans her most vulnerable and honest body of work yet.

Rather than focusing on who she thought she was supposed to be, the album documents the journey of figuring out who she actually is. Full of self-reflection, healing, honesty, and vulnerability, Springsteen pull back the curtain, allowing fans to step into her inner world over the last few years.

For Springsteen, these songs became more than music. They became milestones throughout the healing process “Some of them are confessions, some of them are like late-night epiphanies, some of them are crash outs, some of them are moments where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she shared. “It really just documents my journey through it.”

One song in particular, “same God,” stands out as especially meaningful. The track explores her evolving relationship with faith, family, and curiosity while embracing empathy over fear and judgment. “I felt like I was performing faith instead of actually living it,” Springsteen admitted, reflecting on her upbringing and the questions that emerged throughout her healing journey. “I’m gonna look back on this record as an album that changed my life. Regardless of the accolades, regardless of what it does, these songs have made me a different human, a better human.”

Now that the album is officially out, Springsteen is ready to bring these songs directly to fans. With dates across Europe this summer and more shows still to be announced, the singer-songwriter is excited to experience this new chapter in a live setting. “Live music is my fuel,” she shared. “There’s just no feeling like that.”

As this new chapter begins, we feel certain that Springsteen’s fans are going to rally behind her. Her new album is an incredible project that many people will find themselves in. Stay tuned for me from the artist!

Connect:

To keep up with Alana Springsteen, follow her on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook.

Alana Springsteen’s music is available everywhere you buy or stream music. Take a listen below and check out more new recently released tunes on our ‘New Country Music’ playlist. Be sure to give the playlist a follow for your weekly new country music fix.