Izzy Oram Brown approaches songwriting with intention, waiting until she’s ready to say something before setting aside everything else on her plate. And there’s typically plenty on that plate. The New York City-based artist has had quite the multifaceted career, one that’s taken her from jazz studies to Nashville session work to playing guitar alongside Julian Lage, Why Bonnie, Youbet and others.
Not a syllable is wasted as Brown traces the emotional arc from uncertainty to acceptance on What I Want, her self-released sophomore LP. Working with multi-instrumentalist Jesse Bielenberg (Altopalo, Dora Jar) and drummer Connor Parks (Cafuné), Brown favors directness over abstraction, couching the many vulnerable moments in richly detailed arrangements, shimmering synth textures and clever indie-pop production.
Here’s more on What I Want from Brown.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “What I Want”
“I wrote this in one fell swoop after returning from an extended family gathering where I felt a bit isolated and out of place. I was participating in a writing group with some close friends at the time, and I wrote quickly to make our deadline. Usually, my process involves many days of chipping away at an idea until I feel satisfied, so this was unusual. Initially, I believed it was a throwaway song—far too simple in lyrical and harmonic content to be any good. As time passed, I was drawn to performing it live, and people really resonated with it. I’ve learned the value of saying exactly what I feel, and I love the way this song has evolved to become the record’s thesis statement.”
2) “Got Me Down”
“Much of this record was written in a very process-oriented way. As a person who plays in many other musical projects, it can be a struggle to find the time to focus on my solo work. I wanted to experiment with how it would feel to have some deadlines, so I booked three recording sessions each with two months in between. ‘Got Me Down’ was written the week before the final session. By this point, I’d sequenced the entire record and felt I had a gap where the second track should be. I wanted something super upbeat that felt like a real pop song with a huge hook to grab listeners after the more sprawling and meditative opening track. The lyrics deal with the experience of making things harder on yourself by overthinking and generally just about feeling low.”
3) “What Is Wanting Worth”
“As I got deeper into the concept of this album, I was thinking obsessively about huge questions like: ‘What do I want in my life?’; ‘How do I want to be in the world?’; ‘How do I want to act toward others?’; ‘How do I want to be treated?’ While these are important and essential things to ponder, they’re also basically unanswerable and never-ending as we move through life. Naturally, I began to become a little sick of my existential crisis. This song serves as the antithesis of the record: wondering about the point of trying and desiring. Maybe it’s better to just accept your shortcomings and not always be pushing toward the next thing. I thought of the title phrase first and was immediately drawn to the alliteration and way the words sound together.”
4) “Go On”
“An older song of mine that made it onto the record. I wrote it about a relationship where I allowed myself to be treated in a way that didn’t align with my values. I put up with behavior that made me feel bad and regretted it after the fact. It’s about boundaries and the importance of standing up for yourself when something doesn’t feel right.”
5) “If I’m Not Made For Love”
“This song explores an insecurity most people feel at one point or another: that they’ll never find love. Of course, no one is not ‘made for love,’ and I firmly believe that everyone is capable and worthy of it. But deep in a moment of loneliness and solitude, it felt empowering to simply state the fear that maybe something was inherently wrong with me that was causing me not to find real, powerful and healthy love. The rest of the song asks lots of questions about love and why we keep coming back to it when it can be so hard and painful. To this day, this song feels overly earnest and a bit corny to me. But part of the point of this record was to lean into those impulses and embrace them.”
6) “When There’s Nothing Left”
“This song was partially inspired by my dear friend and collaborator Léna Bartels. In a lot of her writing, she intentionally uses words and phrases that can have double meanings. I find that compelling, as it’s something I might not naturally do. The phrase ‘What have I done’ came to me when I was thinking about this—both in the sense of regretting the impact of your choices and the more literal taking stock of what you’ve accomplished. Léna and I also often talk about what we consider an ‘end of the world’ song. On my first record, (2022’s) Mess, I wrote a song about my imagined end of the world, and I wanted to explore that again. Ultimately, this song is about how insignificant we are and how, when it all comes down to it, many of the things that seem so important in the moment don’t really matter at all. A lot of the themes I explore in this music are centered around myself, but this song tries to look outward a bit more toward the world at large.”
7) “I Don’t Mind”
“This moment on the record represents a shift from searching and questioning songs to more clarity and self-confidence. ‘I Don’t Mind’ was written as a sort of reminder to myself of the importance of patience and accepting where you’re at in any given moment. It helps me to not compare myself to others’ progress or trajectories and be satisfied with the reality that changes take time. It’s a comforting song about time passing, life moving and just being present.”
8) “Love U The Same”
“During the process of creating this record, I took myself on a few solo writing retreats. I would hole up in a family home in western Massachusetts and tune out all the distractions of regular life. Without my day job, other musical endeavors and social obligations, I spent my time journaling, walking, listening to baseball on the radio, reading and thinking—all in service of writing new material. I found these private moments to be extremely fulfilling and inspiring, and many of the songs on What I Want came out of these sessions.
“‘Love U The Same’ was the first thing I wrote this way and remains one of my favorites. It’s about unconditional love, despite the shortcomings of both you and a partner. It was also the first thing I recorded with Jesse Bielenberg and Connor Parks at Jesse’s Skymall studio. I had no plan to make a full-length LP at the time, and Jesse generously offered to record this one in his space with few expectations. The experience was so wonderful that I immediately knew that I needed to write and record more songs in this way with these people.”
9) “I Believe”
“I wrote this knowing it would be the final track. At its core, it’s a song about being yourself. About staying true amid contradiction, doubt and obstacles. About missing the mark and trying again. About failing and succeeding and starting over. About embracing the in-between and the messy and the growing moments. About acceptance and not caring what anyone else thinks. It’s a song of joy and hope. And I feel it every time I sing it.”
See Izzy Oram Brown live.
