At just 19, Olive Siegel has already cycled through multiple versions of her singer/songwriter self. The Maine-based artist has a previous creative life as Ollielou that included the 2024 In My Room EP and two singles in 2025. Everything On High, her self-released debut as Oh Louise, feels like a more definitive arrival. Out tomorrow, the stunning eight-song collection draws on material Siegel wrote when she was as young as 14, its journal entries and late-night bedroom confessionals charting a surprisingly well-informed journey of love, betrayal, uncertainty and change.
Credit also goes to Siegel’s choice of collaborators, especially Wilco bassist John Stirratt, who’s nuanced chamber-pop arrangements prove just how much he’s taken away from his partnership with Pat Sansone in the Autumn Defense. Siegel typically creates at night, experimenting with open tunings on acoustic guitar or working at the Civil War-era piano in her family’s home. Stirratt was a key mentor during the sessions, helping her tastefully amplify the vulnerability of songs written under more solitary circumstances.
Working out of his home studio in Round Pond, Maine, Charles Van Kirk (Hannah Read, No Swoon) produced Everything On High with the sweeping sophistication and tangible warmth of a lost ’70s singer/songwriter classic, with notable contributions from cellist Nat Smith.
Siegel takes us through Everything On High, song by song.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Do You Lie To Everyone”
“At its core, ‘DYLTE’ is both an admission and an accusation. It’s about being lied to and struggling with your own authenticity as a result—knowing the person you want to love isn’t being emotionally faithful but feeling like you deserve it because you don’t know who you are. I’ve always struggled to understand my own dreams, which I think is symbolic of this internal struggle of not knowing who you are or what you want.”
2) “Machine Angel”
“This song is a lot of different things for me, but mostly it’s an expression of the impending doom I feel about this new digital/AI age. It feels like we’re being constantly berated by all this fast-paced stimulation from some massive sinister algorithm that knows us intimately. When I wrote this song a year or so ago, I felt like we might one day be in an age where AI and everything about it is the new normal, and I almost feel like that day is already here. I was inspired by Radiohead’s ‘wall of sound’ thing they do on some of their songs, like ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’ and ‘How To Disappear Completely.’ I think it adds to the claustrophobic feeling of the song.”
3) “Lie To Me”
“The truth is the most important, most sacred thing in the world. It’s the only thing that can truly keep your conscience clear. Sometimes, the truth is really hard to hear, and it’s easier to believe lies than it is to fully confront a situation. ‘Lie To Me’ is sort of about the cognitive dissonance that came from wishing that I could just accept untruths to protect myself emotionally while knowing I was being blatantly lied to.”
4) “Want U”
“This song is about someone having their back turned toward you emotionally, even if they’ve done nice things for you at certain points. A big part of it is the tension between appreciating what they’ve meant to you and acknowledging the lack of love between the two of you. That’s a painful thing to realize, especially when the other person doesn’t want to admit it, either. There’s an auto-body shop on the side of the highway near my house with a bunch of old cars that never get fixed. It just seemed like such a lonely place, and it really resonated with me because it’s sort of a metaphor for trying to revive something that simply refuses to function. I thought it would be cool to include that in a song.”
5) “Judas”
“This song is sort of hard for me to pin down. The idea for it came to me while I was visiting my old house in Los Angeles and waiting to cross Glendale Boulevard with my friend to get to CVS. I remember feeling like God didn’t exist—and that I was a total fraud. Who knows why that’s what hit me as I was on my way to buy fake nails and blue Gatorade. Like all the other songs on the record, it doesn’t have one specific meaning. Roberta Flack’s ‘Jesse’ inspired the cello arrangements on this song.”
6) “After”
“This is probably my favorite song on the record. The chorus was inspired by Elton John’s ‘I Want Love.’ I’ve always loved Elliott Smith’s use of layered vocals and tight harmonies, so this is also a nod to Elliott, like everything I do. I remember vividly the exact moment this song came to be, which isn’t the case for any of the other songs on the record. I had the piano loop for the melody just sitting in GarageBand. One night, as I was going through old projects, I sang, ‘Mixed messages, missed phone calls.’ From there, the song kind of just took shape on its own.”
7) “How Much I Love You”
“The lyrics and melody are sort of a response to Johnny Cash’s version of ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ a song I’ve always found to be incredibly dark, sad and manipulative, honestly. This comes from the perspective of the subject of that song. Both songs are about the pain of someone leaving you. But with my take on it, I also wanted to explore the bittersweet pain of leaving someone else and the manipulation that person might use to try to make you stay. I love the haunting, weepy pedal steel on this song.”
8) “Slip Away”
“I recorded this straight into my computer microphone on GarageBand and didn’t touch any levels or anything. It was originally supposed to be a demo I’d expand on later, but I liked how it sounded. I wrote it right after I moved from L.A. to Maine in the second half of my freshman year of high school. I was feeling pretty lost—but also excited at the prospect that I could sort of reinvent myself and become a new person. It felt like an apt album closer because that’s sort of the message I wanted to put out with Everything On High—that even after periods of intense sadness and change and loss, it’s possible to come out the other side wiser, with hope for the future and for the person you’re going to become.”
