Ones2Watch Home

Photo: Jordan Van Hecke

Companionship is at the core of Pennsylvania-bred singer-songwriter Avery Lynch’s music. It’s a connecting thread that can be traced throughout the pages of her latest project, The Kids Table, a tender collection of seven tracks that fully explore the best and worst parts of coming of age. But it’s a sentiment that has been present long before she began penning the lyrics and laying down the melodies to her latest diary entry given sonic form. Having composed music since the age of eight, Lynch has always used the art form as a vehicle for self-expression, her go-to confidant when feelings became too much or words weren’t quite enough.  

We had the chance to invite Lynch to speak on The Kids Table, taking us through each of its poignant moments, track by track. 

“i’m sorry if i hurt u sometimes”

"i’m sorry if i hurt u sometime"s is a song I wrote when I first moved to LA. During my road trip out here, I listened to a lot of Holly Humberstone and was really inspired by her sound and mid-tempo music. This was the first song I wrote in that style and it sparked the rest of my EP. Since I had just moved and was about to graduate college, my life was changing so much that I wanted to write about something familiar but a new side of it, so I tried to write about a breakup I went through a few years ago with my high school boyfriend of five years. I wrote my song “Out Of Love with You” about it while I was going through the breakup but I felt inspired to close that chapter with how I view the whole situation years later. I brought the song to Steve Rusch, who got it pretty much perfect on his first try. I really wanted the song to feel like you’re watching a movie because that’s kind of what that whole breakup and time of my life feels like to me now since I’m so far removed. 

“Love of My Life”

"Love of My Life" started as a little melody I was humming to myself when I was doing homework last summer. I actually ended up writing the whole first verse just sitting on my bed, quickly typing out the words in my notes app cause it felt so effortless to write and the words and melody kinda came together. I ended up writing the chorus with my favorite writing buddy, Neisha Grace, who’s co-written on so many of my songs. When I finished the song, it felt so much like a young-love confession almost. I wanted the song to have the same cinematic glow to it as “When It Ends” so I brought it to the same producer, Dan Gleyzer. We wanted to make the song feel magical and be something that could be played at weddings and I think that’s exactly what we did. Neisha is actually getting married soon and “Love of My Life” will be the song she walks down the aisle to, which is a beautiful full-circle moment for the two of us!

“could never be me”

This song is a little bit different from the others on the project. I wrote “could never be me” about my own personal struggles with mental health within the last year, and this song was actually my way to cope during the worst of it. I wrote more and more of the song each “pit” I felt like I was falling into. The first verse was something I wrote in July of 2021 and the rest of the song followed in October. I haven’t fully expressed to many people what it really is that I was experiencing to write this song, but my producer, Steve Rusch, asked that I tell him about it so he can put the rest of the song together the way it should be. We used bits and pieces of a voice memo of me talking about it within the track. At some point soon I might go into more detail about the story behind “could never be me,” but it’s definitely the most meaningful song I’ve ever written.

“Kids Table”

The title of this song is actually something I came up with a couple weeks before releasing my first EP, To Love Someone Else. I was telling my sisters about my idea and all it was was a title, but I revisited it and it came with a whole new meaning. I really wanted to touch on that feeling when you’re in your twenties and you have no idea where you’re supposed to be and what you’re supposed to do. You feel like a kid still but now you have adult responsibilities and you notice that as you’re growing up, you don’t actually feel older, you just have to try to catch up to how you think you’re supposed to be feeling. It’s really confusing making major life decisions and then going home for the holidays to sit at the kids' table again, but then again, you don’t want that to end and you don’t know when it’s going to. I wrote the first verse to this song with Neisha out of thin air cause we had nothing to write about and no previous ideas other than the concept “kids table.” I brought the song to Dallas Caton who produced it and gave it the exact feeling I wanted this song to have. Now here it is and I got to name my EP after it exactly two years after saying “I feel like the kids table would be such a cool EP name” so that’s also just cool for me.

“Obvious”

Obvious is a song I wrote about a situationship I had a while ago. It was so obvious that something was happening between us but neither of us acknowledged it and it never amounted to anything. Sometimes so much is happening and yet nothing is happening at the same time. I wrote this song in just a few hours by myself and it felt so easy and cathartic almost to describe the situation, especially since I was trying to tap into what it felt like when I’m now so far removed from it. I went home to Pennsylvania in May and worked on the song over zoom with Steve Rusch, who once again perfectly captured the kind of mellow acceptance that I feel about the whole situation years later.

“Sleepover”

I wrote "Sleepover" last fall in my room at home with Neisha. I just moved from Boston which is a second home to me, and I really wanted to capture what it felt like living there with my boyfriend and our friends. It started as a thing me and my boyfriend did every time we hung out. We’d meet at the T, go to his apartment and get in comfy clothes, and go get snacks and watch movies and cartoons for the rest of the night. When we moved in with our friends, going on Walgreens runs and watching movies became an almost nightly thing for us. It’s such a fun memory and I really wanted to capture that feeling in a song so I can have it forever. Emi Dragoi and Griff Clawson did the production on this and nailed it. The song feels just as fun as the story behind it was.

“okay feat. ROSIE”

"okay" is a song I wrote with Rosie to be a lullaby for anxiety/panic attacks, or really any kind of struggle that you just need to take a moment to breathe and feel better. I thought having Rosie on the song with me would be perfect because we’re close friends and we’ve gone to each other about our struggles with mental health and we both feel passionate about sharing those realities through our music to help spread awareness. Writing with Rosie is always so natural and easy and the whole song felt very therapeutic. Jordanlilvee produced this song, and he’s who produced all of the songs on my As Written EP and so many more, so I knew he’d make it perfect which is exactly what he did. Jordanlilvee is also my boyfriend and the three of us went to college together and have been through so much with each other in our lives so making this song with the two of them felt very close to home and special.