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If you feel like growing up has been harder than you ever could have imagined as a child, you’re not alone. Rising singer-songwriter OSTON explores every aspect of that confusion in Melancholia, the follow-up EP to her 2021 debut album Am I Talking Too Much?. Throughout six sharp tracks, OSTON details the jolting arrival of adulthood and the newfound anxieties that come with it. The EP extends from her life as a college student in Chicago to her current experience as a young adult navigating a part of life no one can truly prepare you for.

OSTON’s music has always been about self-reflection and how that affects her own interpersonal relationships, but Melancholia feels more vulnerable than ever. The EP signifies not only her growth as an artist but of budding confidence as a representative of her generation’s complex existence. OSTON takes listeners on a journey that navigates everything from the self-doubt that comes with entering the dating world, finally getting over a toxic relationship, to ultimately realizing that the relationship with your own reflection can be equally as poisonous. 

We had the chance to chat with OSTON about the making of the EP, what it means to her, and an exclusive track-by-track breakdown.

This is your third full project, how do you feel you’ve grown since we last chatted about Am I Talking Too Much? or even Sitting at the Kids Table?

I feel like I’m in such a different world than I was when I first started writing music. With that first project, I didn't know what I wanted to say, I just knew I wanted to start the conversation and have music out. Especially because I was going to school for music and my peers would be like, “Oh you do music, can I hear some of your stuff?” So getting that first project out was really me being like “I’m serious about this. I want to do music.”

With the second project, I was able to dive into what I wanted to sound like. Instead of doing straight down the middle pop, I wanted to experiment with staying pop in my writing and doing more experimental instrumentation. When I started working with my producer and boyfriend who does all of my music, we developed this awesome chemistry around songwriting and he figured out exactly what I wanted even if I couldn’t communicate it in words. I’m so lucky that I work with someone where I can just make a body gesture and he’s like “Great,” and he figures it out. That’s what led me to where I am now where I'm so much more confident in what I want to say. At the same time, I feel like I'm still so green in this whole experience and there’s so much more to learn.

This project is super self-aware. Can you talk a little about those complex feelings that went into the EP?

When we first started writing this project at the beginning of 2021, I was at this age where I knew all of these things were approaching. I hit this point of, “I have to become an adult and figure out how to fend for myself. I’m not living in my parents’ basement. I don't necessarily have them to fall back on.” This project was me mentally preparing for all of this to happen, but at the end of the day, I didn’t do any of it. My birthday is a month away and I’m still swimming in stuff I have to do. A lot of the project was me feeling upset with myself because I know I have a lot of issues dealing with stress and mental health, so I was questioning if I know this about myself, why can’t I take the next steps to figure out what’s going on and heal? I started going to therapy around when I finished the project and I’m starting to work through it. Obviously, another form of therapy for me is writing songs and in doing that I was able to realize, “You need to grow up. Everyone grows up at some point and you need to figure it out.”

These songs are similar in theme, but some are more upbeat like “Girl in the Mirror” while some are extremely stripped back like “nothing about anything.” How do you decide if a feeling you want to explore is more suited to a softer or more upbeat sound? Is it just natural?

You’re so right, those songs are doing very similar things. Even “Mouthwash” accomplishes the same thing. I realized when I was listening back to the project I have so many songs where I reference “the mirror.” It’s something that I obviously struggle with and means a lot to me. The reason they ended up having the energy they did was because I was in the room with Drew. For “Girl in the Mirror” specifically, the second we started he had these big drums and big energy. I was in a playful mood like “Damn, I hate this generation. I hate the way everyone’s addicted to social media. I hate how it makes me feel.” That was the take that we brought that day. It’s literally just the vibe of the day. There’s so many different ways to say the same thing, but I think the ones that ended up on the project are the best way that I’ve put those messages so far.

You talk a lot about how social media makes you (and our collective generation) feel in your music. How is your relationship with social media currently?

Let’s just be unfiltered. I am going through it right now with social media. I so badly want to talk about it in a positive light because there are so many great things that have come out of it for me personally. “Lie About You” and “Whatshisface” getting their moments brought a lot of listeners my way and I'm so grateful for that. But social media is, especially with the updated algorithms and what they’re prioritizing these days, literally soul-crushing. So much of my job and for every creative individual is spent around content creation. I take multiple days in my calendar that are just dedicated to coming up with ideas and filming them, then editing them and then editing them in each individual app and then posting it.

Every session I have for the most part, we take the first half an hour and we talk about TikTok and how it's like hurting all of our souls. I’ve had a couple sessions with people at various levels in their career and everyone says the same thing which is like “I’m never doing enough, I need to do more. My followers are going down.” I think the negative toll it takes on our brains sometimes outweighs the benefit of it. It’s really scary because I don’t know when it’s gonna change. Something I’ve appreciated a lot is I’ve seen a lot more content creators of any genre come out and just say “I’m not well. This is not an easy job.” Reading people's comments “I hate your guts” day after day for posting about something you’re passionate about is not easy.

Tell us about the tracklist, because it tells an interesting story progression and I would love to hear about how you picked the order.

The linear progression of the project is about each place I was in when I was writing the songs, which happens in a sequence. “HARD TO LOVE” was written about my dating life in Chicago, so that had to be first. Then you have the breakup song that happened when I moved to Los Angeles. Then it just goes through the continuation of “Even though I made it past these traumas in my life, there’s all of these new things that I’m entering into.” Ending on “20 Nothing” is — I want to say hopeful but I guess it’s not that hopeful. (laughs) It’s a somber note. It was my iteration of the last project ending on “Sour,” which had the same feeling of not knowing what could happen next.

“HARD TO LOVE”

“HARD TO LOVE” was something I had tried to write many times. I was on a writing camp with my core group of friends that I love writing with, which is Drew, Jordy, and my roommate kate the dreamer. We got a cabin up in Big Bear and there was one night where Drew started playing the lead, driving synth melody that starts off “HARD TO LOVE” and I was instantly transported back to walking the streets of Chicago after going out to the bars when it’s brisk outside and you’re drunk stumbling home. I went from getting out of a long-term relationship in high school to being single in this giant city. I was on the dating apps and those all sucked. I'd fall for people really hard even though I had nothing in common with them and then get heartbroken when they decided they didn’t want to continue things with me.

Ultimately I felt like I was the issue and that there was something wrong with me. But then I came to find out, as I fell in love with my current partner, that not everyone is meant for everyone. Just because somebody doesn’t want to be with you, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It wouldn’t have been a good fit anyways. I didn't even like some of the people I was upset about, it was the idea of being with someone. So that song and writing it was very important for me for closing my chapter in Chicago and my single life.

"Whatshisface”

I tried to write this song so many times about a relationship that I went through. It’s the same person that “Lie About You” is about, so I was writing a lot of really sad songs and also songs that were full of anger. I felt like I had approached it from every angle, but then I went to a session with Taylor Upsahl. I’ve looked up to her for a long time, so it was a really cool moment getting to write with her. I went in and explained that I’ve written this song from every aspect that I possibly could and I feel like I’m at a point now where I don’t give a fuck. I’m so ready to move on with my life and this person doesn't affect me anymore, so I don’t know if I can write about it anymore. And she was like “That’s exactly what we should say. Like who? Whatshisface? I don’t care about him.” Obviously, the song is heavily influenced by UPSAHL. She was in the room and definitely helped with the “blah, blah, blah, blah” part. Her note placement is... you can’t not hear it. It was a very healing session for me. I really feel like I walked away from that being like, “I’m done. This relationship can’t hurt me anymore.”

“Mouthwash”

Honestly, this was one of the easier songs we wrote. It was actually the last one and it wasn’t even supposed to be on the project. I felt like I hadn’t completely said everything I needed to say with the concept of self-doubt. At that time, and still, I was having a lot of panic attacks. I wanted to figure out a way to embody the feeling of having a panic attack, but at the same time not dealing with it properly and letting it all go. I had a session with my friend Gucci Caliente and Drew and as we were getting to the hook, I did the thing that I always do with my hands where I was like, “I just want it to be really big and explode and all of this stuff with synths.” Drew was like “I get, I get it.” and Gucci was like “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m excited.” It came together really quickly and we had the entire demo of the song at the end of the day.

I was really interested in trying to experiment with hyperpop, which I love, and never knew if I’d be able to incorporate it. I just knew if we were gonna do it, it would be this song. Not that it’s hyperpop, but the drop followed by the high-pitched vocal that’s hard-tuned mixed with a low octave is the closest I’ve ever gotten and I think it’s cool.

“nothing about anything (demo)”

I had a Zoom session set up with Drew and my friend James Droll. Beforehand, I had a complete mental breakdown. I was having such a bad day and I was 100% sure I was going to cancel the session. Something in me was like “Just pick up the ukulele and try to figure something out to calm yourself down.” I don’t even play the ukulele, I don’t know how. I played these two little notes and just wrote the whole verse. That was like 10 minutes before the session was supposed to happen. I went downstairs and cried on the call to James. He said, “This song that you have is really beautiful. Let’s flesh it out,” and then we just wrote the whole thing. We took our phones to record it and just threw the song together.

When we came back to it we tried a bunch of different production styles. We had all of these versions of the song that I showed it to my team and they were like, “Just put out the demo. Nothing that you’ve accomplished has been as raw.” The day that I was puffy-eyed crying made it sound so emotional. Even though there’s so many things about the audio that makes me cringe, I was like, “You’re right. This is just so intimate.”

“Girl in the Mirror”

This song is very much about my relationship with social media and about the whole conversation we were having earlier. I feel like it's done such a number on our generation. I even notice it to the extent that, if I'm having a conversation with Drew and he needs to bend over and tie his shoe, I’ll pull out my phone and start scrolling because I can’t just sit there in silence. It’s scary. I still feel a little weird about the way that we worded it, but I don’t really care because this is the way it came out. I was like “Dude. Social media is literally my hard drug.” I’ve never done hard drugs. It’s about hating everything about ourselves because we see the ideal person online and struggling with that.

“20 Nothing”

We wrote this at another writing camp in Joshua Tree, it was the same thing as “HARD TO LOVE” where Drew started playing this really somber piano synth noise and I was sitting in the kitchen drinking a glass of wine. I was already pretty drunk, so I just started singing to myself. Katie and Jordy both took out their phones and started filming me, because I basically sang the entire song as I was sitting at the counter. Everyone in the room wanted the song to be just a ballad and I really thought about it for a minute. But, in my gut I wanted this outro to be so fuzzy and confusing. I wanted there to be Tame Impala drums and this weird, jumbly motion of what growing up is like that spits you out into this realization of “Oh my god, I’m an adult.” It was a really emotional song to write and I’m glad I wrote it with those people because I don’t think I could’ve done it in a different room.

There was a big part of me reflecting on something I know we all feel, which is nostalgia, wishing that we could go back and tell ourselves to appreciate things while we had them. I think about my life growing up in my house with my family celebrating Christmas and the magic of Santa Claus being real. I wish I could tell myself I’m never going to feel that feeling again. To enjoy it. I would tell my younger self, “Hey, I want to tell you that everything is gonna be okay but it’s not. Life actually gets a lot harder. But you find new ways to deal with it.”