Audiences are no longer satisfied with the mystique of celebrity; and after years of being isolated from loved ones and strangers alike, musicians are degrading the boundaries between themselves and their audiences, creating a new revival of confessional songwriting.
Confessionalism, as a literary term, comes from the mid-20th century when postmodern writers tore away from formal conventions to write autobiographical and often deeply personal works. Writing curtly about sexuality, trauma and mental health were novel, taboo concepts at this time. Writers like Sylvia Plath became the face of taking the pain of the individual and elevating it to public art.
On May 21st of 2021, three musicians released their own confessional albums: Olivia Rodrigo with her debut album Sour, Waterparks with their fourth album Greatest Hits and Dayglow’s sophomore album Harmony House. Each of these albums confront relationships, mental health, and the dynamic between the artist and their audience with all the raw and intimate hallmarks of confessionalism. These albums prove that artists are prepared to lay themselves bare for the world to see, even if doing so may hurt them more in the long run.
Sour
One of the critiques of confessionalism has always been its self-centeredness. Wallowing in one’s own despair in the name of art can easily be dismissed as immature. Yet it’s this very immaturity that is so refreshing from Olivia Rodrigo in her album, Sour. The then 18-year-old former Disney actress opens the first verse on the album with the lines
“I'm so insecure, I think that I'll die before I drink.”
She’s unapologetic with her disappointment in the “teenage dream” and utilizes cliches to create intimacy for her listeners. This can also be seen in her more vulnerable moments like “enough for you” which details the lengths Rodrigo went through in order to make herself more attractive to someone that she had known would leave her from the start.
This album details insecurity, apathy, and social pressure all pulling at Rodrigo as her fame rises. While most listeners of this album likely don’t have fame weighing on them the way she does, they still relate to the disconnect between reality and the often picture-perfect lives of celebrities and social media stars.
Greatest Hits
While pop artists may have a more established distance between themselves and their work, the opposite could not be more true for alternative or emo bands like Waterparks who were plucked out of obscurity by the Good Charlotte brothers and toured with Mikey Way of My Chemical Romance. Songwriter and frontman of Waterparks Awsten Knight doesn’t have the notoriety of Disney backing his fame, so his band relies more desperately on fan culture to maintain their commercial relevance.
This is where confessionalism becomes vital for an album like Greatest Hits. Fans feel like they get to know the ‘real’ Knight through his music and these parasocial relationships can create everything from sold-out tour venues to Twitter interactions. That’s not to say this relationship is without consequences, like in the song “LIKE IT” with the line “I can't tweet that I wanna kill myself but if I put it in a song, that shit goes hard as hell” or “Violet!” which recounts Knight’s experience with an obsessive, stalker fan saying
“Now you’re looking through the peephole on the door of my apartment. My panic’s at the ceiling but I'm flat down on the carpet.”
Confessionalism is likely part of why someone felt so entitled to Knight’s life, but confessionalism is also what allows Knight to take that experience and make it into his next single. At times the lyrics on this album are disconcerting with their boldness and by the third or fourth reference to unique suicidal ideation listeners have to finally question if Knight needs help? Then we also have to question, is that simply successful confessionalism at work for Knight, giving his overwhelmingly teenage audience someone who can say the things they’re feeling?
Harmony House
Of these artists, Dayglow is the newest to commercial success and that inexperience is part of the charm in his album Harmony House. Dayglow focuses on the loss of intimacy, especially from people he used to hold near and dear. This loss seems to be a natural consequence of growing up that has also been distorted and worsened by his career.
In “Strangers” he details the pain of knowing someone but no longer having them in your life, “It's gotten to the point one time I didn't recognize myself. I thought that I was someone else beside you.” Despite the synth and upbeat production on this album, Dayglow’s confessionalism always hits like a quiet admission.
The best example of this is in “Crying on the Dancefloor,” where Dayglow laments how he “thought he could keep himself together” when he was surrounded by people he didn’t know but it was that moment that his emotions finally boiled over and he, as the title implies, cried on the dancefloor.
Confessionalism for Dayglow is about reflection, taking pain, and tending to it until it fades to a bittersweet nostalgia. This album also touches on fan culture in “Something” which details how much love people will give to things that can never love them back. As Dayglow is neither a child actor nor a veteran of the music scene, this song feels like Dayglow’s conflicted emotions about being on the other side of that relationship and realizing how distorted it is.
As artists give more of their inner world to their audience the more they run the risk of permanently losing the very boundaries and privacy that they lament not having enough of, to begin with. Social pressure, paranoia and insecurity are not unique to artists like Olivia Rodrigo, Awsten Knight, and Dayglow but what are they meant to do when the very art that sustains them is also paving the road for their audiences to take more from them?
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