Los Angeles-via-Georgia singer/songwriter Katelyn Tarver recently released her stunningly beautiful new album Subject To Change on November 12. Today, she shares the all-too-relatable video for “Year From Now,” a folk-infused meditation on the healing power of time. The song — featured in Toyota & SiriusXM’s “Home For The Holidays” campaign — is the perfect follow-up to previews singles “Hurt Like That” (premiered withUnder the Radar and featured on Spotify’s New Music Friday & BBC Radio 1’s Best New Pop), “Nicer” (premiered with Atwood Magazine), “All Our Friends Are Splitting Up” (premiered on Flaunt Magazine) and “Shit Happens.” To celebrate, Tarver will be embarking on a run of headline shows from New York to Los Angeles starting next week, before setting out on a larger tour with JOHNNYSWIM next year – tour dates & tickets here.
Tarver recently performed the single during her Paste session here, as well. On Subject to Change, she emerges as the rare kind of artist capable of capturing the most painful truths through her willingness to bare all with her lyrics, all wrapped up in impossibly gorgeous pop songs. With a record of media acclaim from the likes of NPR, Billboard, SPIN, GRAMMY.com, Earmilk, The Guardian and American Songwriter and millions of followers, on her new album, Tarver explores the complexities that come with navigating life through your 20s and 30s.
With lyrics that capture a bracing specificity that strikes every raw nerve, she documents a turbulent period in her recent past, shedding light on all the grief, confusion and a lost sense of self. Infinitely brightened by her radiant voice, the result is the musical equivalent of a brutally honest conversation with a close friend – one that leaves you undeniably rattled but with a renewed clarity and deeper understanding of your own chaotic heart.
Co-written and produced with longtime collaborators including Davis Naish, David Arkwright and Justin Gammella (Ashe, Lennon Stella), Tarver explains her thoughts around the album: “I think a lot of us go through that phase in life where you ask yourself, ‘Is this it?’ It can be so isolating and so hard to talk about, especially with social media and all the pressure to always have your shit together. Life is unpredictable. For all the stories of triumph and resilience, there are just as many stories of failure and getting lost. The addict relapses. The happy couple gets divorced. The one you’ve put on a pedestal lets you down. Finding the love of your life doesn’t solve your problems. You know the expression, the only way out is through? These songs are me making my way through. Giving myself permission to not have the answers. Letting myself feel it all. The pain, the joy, the confusion, the bittersweet in-between…I learned that uncertainty can be an open door. And that change is a constant invitation I want to learn to accept.”
Thanks to unfettered self-expression, Subject to Change ultimately instills listeners with a newfound willingness to embrace their own messiness and mutability. “As I was writing and exploring all the emotions that went into this album, I finally got to the point of admitting that there’s so much I don’t have figured out — which is really scary, but also incredibly freeing,” she says. “The reality is that none of us knows what we’re doing; we’re all just trying our best. It’s been a big deal to let myself be open to being in progress like that, and I hope these songs can be a friend to anyone facing uncertainty or change. That’s what they’ve been for me.”
