CHELSEA CUTLER

PHOTOS BY GINA SCARPINO AND WORDS BY SAMANTHA ANEED

From a young age, parents can usually pick up on what interests their kids and what doesn’t. Oftentimes, they’ll encourage you to find your voice, or find something you love and stick with it. That is exactly what Chelsea Cutler’s parents did for her.

Chelsea Cutler grew up learning music from a young age. Like most, her talent was natural from the start. She says, “My parents had me in piano and guitar lessons super young, and they always encouraged our creative inclinations, so I got started pretty young.” Just like anyone growing up, you tend to find your own passions and things you enjoy as time goes on. For Cutler, music was always there, but she also enjoyed playing soccer too. While attending college, she started to take music more seriously and work on becoming a singer, songwriter and producer. In 2017 she signed with Ultra Records, she then left school for her first tour supporting Quinn XCII in his national tour.

Her music is very unique and different. “I think it has a lot of organic indie elements and a lot of pop elements to it too. Lyrically, it’s pretty honest and representative of my life,” she says. Writing music that is as honest as hers takes a lot of courage because, in a way, you are opening up and letting everyone who listens get a glimpse of that almost hidden part of your life. Her lyrism and the way she manipulates words to be able to flow together perfectly takes talent and she does it flawlessly.

When it comes to being so honest and creating music with very open and genuine lyrics, Cutler has to prepare herself for the initial response from the people in her life. Writing such vulnerable music can be hard but also easy at the same time. There is always a small fear of how people will react.

“The easiest part is that I am writing from experience, so it comes quickly and naturally. The hardest part is sharing that vulnerability with people. I definitely get scared for my loved ones and my friends to hear my lyrics,” Cutler says. Songwriting is easiest when you can write based on your own life and things you go through and that is how Cutler creates her music. “It [songwriting] definitely all comes from my own personal experiences.”

If you take a moment to listen to any of the music she has released, you’re able to clearly tell she puts every emotion she has felt into all her music and that is what makes her songs real and true to who she is.

2017 was a big year for Cutler, she released her first single titled, “Your Shirt” The track has since reached more than 50 million streams on Spotify and also earned a high place on SoundCloud’s Pop Chart. The same year, she released her debut EP “Snow in October”. 2017 was really the year Cutler kicked off her career in the industry. Following an epic first year, came 2018 where she released a collection of self-produced work, her independent mixtape called “Sleeping With Roses”. Soon after its release, she announced her first headlining tour which included 18 major cities across the U.S. and sold out within the first week of tickets going on sale. In May of 2019, she got together with singer-songwriter Jeremy Zucker and together they put out an EP titled, “Brent (Live in New York)”. The five-track EP includes a standout single, “You Were Good To Me”. As far as collaborations go, Cutler noted that this is her favorite so far. “My favorite collaboration so far has to be the “Brent” EP I did with Jeremy Zucker.” As far as who she’d like to work with in the future, she says, her dream collab is the country duo, Dan + Shay.

Flash forward to 2020, Chelsea released her first debut album, How to Be Human which landed at number 23 on Billboard’s Top 200 chart. The 15-track record is full of songs that tell one big story. “I probably wrote 25 or so [songs for How to Be Human]. I think I only really even presented 18-20 of those to my management and label. I just chose the songs that felt the most powerful to me and the ones that best told a cohesive story.”

Creating a record as beautiful as How to Be Human took a lot of patience, effort and time. “It took about a year and a half to do the album,” she remembers. While creating this work of art, Cutler was clearly able to highlight the struggles that every 20-something faces whether it be romantically, socially or just with finding themselves. Title track “How to be Human” really highlights how most young adults think they would have everything figured out by a certain age. In Cutler’s case, she uses the lyric, “Thought I’d know it all by 21 / but I still don’t know How to be Human” and most listeners can completely relate to that idea.

Each track tells a different story by itself, but the record as a whole tells one big story and everything flows together so easily. All the songs on the album are self-written by Cutler and all come from a very personal moment in her life. She really opened up and let us feel everything she was going through alongside her. “None of them were particularly hard; if a song isn’t coming naturally, I usually give up on it pretty fast. ‘I Was In Heaven’ or ‘nj’ were the hardest emotionally.” Writing relatable music isn’t something an artist does on purpose, sometimes it just happens that way. “Honestly I don’t think too much about an overall message or overall image; I just make music that feels right and hopefully it resonates with people,” she says.

Following the release of her debut album, Cutler announced the How to be Human tour. Notable cities include New York, Detroit, Chicago and San Francisco. Watching her progress as a performer has been something spectacular. “It just takes experience, like anything else. I used to get such bad stage fright, but the more I watched others and learned from them, and the more I practiced and consciously worked on my performing, the better it got.”

Her stage presence has only gotten better as she gets further into her career. She went from being sort of shy to a complete ball of energy, running from one side of the stage to the next. “Performing is such an adrenaline rush. It’s just a really great wholesome way to have fun, honestly. I love feeling like I’m connecting with everybody at the show.” She creates such an immersive show and every fan that has attended a show can tell you the energy that radiates off her, goes directly into the crowd; everybody is dancing the entire set.

Her 22-song setlist included tracks like “Sad Tonight,” “You are Losing Me” and “I Was In Heaven.” She also did an iconic cover of “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. Each song she performs gives off a different vibe, whether she is playing guitar or piano, each song sounds so beautiful live. The energy she gives out during each performance is unlike any other. When asked what her favorite songs to perform live are, Cutler says, “‘Are You Listening’ is really fun. ‘nj’ is also such a big moment.” Cutler is taking the music industry by storm and making her mark in a huge way. From her unique production, down to her emotional and raw lyrics, she is an artist unlike any other. She truly is the definition of “one of a kind”.

It has been a pleasure watching her grow as a person and an artist. We are so excited to see what she has in store for the future as far as her career, new music and of course, seeing her bring her production live on stage.