Kansas singer/songwriter Nicole Springer‘s debut solo E.P., Willing, is chock-full of emotion and serves as a musical outlet for painful life experience.
This is Springer’s first solo E.P. The six-track recording straddles the musical spectrum, from Americana and folk to classic rock and R&B. The tempos switch back and forth like an ebbing river.
The album opens with the emotive title track and is followed by the attention-grabbing, ominously-titled song, “Hell.”
“It’s one of the most personal songs I’ve ever written and the reason I returned to music after a year and a half hiatus,” she says.
A year ago she made what she calls “an emotional decision to cut a parent out of my life.” That’s a pretty heavy helping of stone-cold potatoes on anyone’s plate.
“My response to cutting those ties was to write ‘Hell,'” she exclaims. “The song nearly wrote itself as I poured every bit of my heart’s pain into the words and music.”
The result is not a weeping ballad but an empowering piece wrapped in warm melodies. Standout songs like “Come Clean,” a personal track full of emotion and conviction, and the closing track “I’ll Never Be A Bitter Woman,” demonstrate her range of emotions and convictions.
“It’s my personal favorite on the record,” she says. “It’s a true story about my wife and me on the eve of our wedding and the days, weeks, and months after.”
“Up until the night before our wedding, we both had struggled to be completely honest about how deep some of our pains were rooted,” she adds. “We came completely clean on that night and it has led to the truest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
Springer is an award-winning songwriter, vocalist and folk-pop instrumentalist who has written original music for The Good Hearts, Heart Machine, and others.
In an era when women are deciding if and when/where/how they should speak of sexual violence or harassment, putting the words and emotions into song are Springer’s way.
She vowed to overcome, rather than be a victim, writing “I’ll Never Be A Bitter Woman” for that reason and as a message to other women.
“I decided to use music as a tool to heal and boy did it work,” she exclaims. “This song is one of the most empowering pieces I’ve written; my favorite line is this: “Despite the urge to forget about all the lessons that I could’ve lived without/ I’ll make use of them in some way/ like I’ll never be a bitter woman.”
