On her debut album, isn’t that sweet?, OSTON finds room for heartbreak, humor, and the complicated work of learning to trust herself.
Photo Credit: Lexi Yob
OSTON had wanted to make an album for years, but she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. She released EPs and wrote with other artists along the way. Now, on her 13-song debut, isn’t that sweet?, she looks back at her twenties, including relationships she stayed in too long and experiences she’s still making sense of.
“I’m really happy that I waited,” she tells Hear it!, “because I think I wasn’t ready up until now.”
She made the record with a small circle of friends and collaborators, writing about things she’d struggled to put into words for years. But being ready to make an album didn’t make paying for it any less daunting.
“I’m really scared. It was really expensive.”
That’s part of the conversation, too. OSTON talks about funding her music independently as openly as she talks about her relationships. She’s still figuring some of it out, and she can laugh about it, even when the worry is real. When asked what she could lose by going all in, she answers: thousands and thousands of dollars.
Born Austin Wolfe, OSTON grew up in Park City, Utah, where she wrote songs and took classical voice lessons. She also drew inspiration from Adele and Julia Michaels, particularly their direct approach to songwriting. While in college, she worked at a Chicago recording studio and began collaborating with other musicians. Today, she writes for other artists as well as herself.
Those sessions ask something different of her. When she’s writing for someone else, she explains, her own mood can’t dictate the song the other artist’s feelings come first. She’s learned from the people she works with, picking up ideas about writing and vocal delivery while figuring out how to help them say what they mean.
Early in her career, OSTON encountered people eager to tell her what kind of artist she should become, at a time when she was already unsure of her appearance, her sound, and who she wanted to be.
“I think I became very codependent on the teams that I was working with when I was younger,” she says.
After parting ways with her second management team, she spent about a year looking for a new one. In the meantime, she had to make decisions she’d gotten used to leaving to other people: who to work with, what to wear, even what she thought. By the time she found her next team, she knew more about what she wanted.
“This is who I am,” she recalls thinking. “And you’re on board or you’re not.”
She made isn’t that sweet? with a small group of friends and collaborators, alongside her two managers. The record took between a year and a half and two years to come together. She had enough songs for an album, and she finally felt ready to make one.
OSTON didn’t know the album’s full story when she started writing it. The early songs looked back at her early twenties: dating, being let down, and looking for love in relationships that made her question herself. As she kept writing, her mental health became part of the record, too. She began taking prescribed medication and noticed changes in her confidence and how she saw herself.
“I felt like a whole fucking range of emotions making this record,” she says.
Some songs use humor to brush off an experience. Others deal with feelings she hasn’t been able to shake. That sarcasm comes through in the title, isn’t that sweet?, a line from “Couldn’t it be me?” about watching someone give a new partner the affection they withheld from her. For OSTON, the frustration was realizing they had been capable of it all along.
On “Pancakes,” moments spent with a partner and their family get her thinking about death and what it would mean to grow old together. “I used to like that girl” looks at the pressure to change her body and personality to please other people.
The album closes with “No me without you,” which addresses the place anxiety and depression have in her life, including as she seeks treatment.
“There’s not a version of me that exists without my anxiety and depression,” she says. “So the two have to coexist.”
Writing about those experiences helped, even if she’s still working through some of them.
“I think in a lot of ways writing this record was therapeutic,” she says.
When we ask what would make her 2019 self proudest, OSTON points to the community she’s found in Los Angeles. She moved there worried she wouldn’t meet people she clicked with. Now, she says she has the best friends and collaborators.
“I am proud of where I’m at in my personal life,” she says.
When asked what she hopes the album helps people understand about her, OSTON turns the question around. “I think the best thing that listeners could take away from this record is understanding something about themself.” She is comfortable leaving space for that.
As for having herself completely figured out?
“Bitch, I don’t know,” she says. “We’re still figuring that out.”
With isn’t that sweet? out in the world, OSTON is getting ready to bring these songs on the road with Maddie Zahm. She knows opening for another artist means introducing herself to people who may be hearing her music for the first time, and she plans to give them plenty to remember. “I’m gonna talk, and I’m gonna overshare, and I’m gonna tell you things that I probably shouldn’t,” she says. For an album built around experiences she is still making sense of, sharing those stories with a room full of new people feels like a fitting next step.
Photos by Lexi Yob
