Columbia Records NY/Sony Music Nashville artist-songwriter Alana Springsteen finds her love life shifting into reverse for the end-of-the-road track, “shoulder to cry on,” available today (3/3) across all streaming platforms and digital retailers. Listen here. As featured on the first installment from her hotly anticipated three-part debut album, TWENTY SOMETHING, Messing It Up drops March 24 – pre-save/pre-add now.
“‘shoulder to cry on’ represents a very real low point in the Messing It Up phase of my debut album TWENTY SOMETHING. Desperation, sadness, yearning, loneliness, self-doubt … it’s all there in this one. We’ve all wanted someone we can’t have at one point or another and prayed for some form of relief. It’s an incredibly uncomfortable place to be. I’ve always had a hard time letting myself cry. Allowing myself to feel emotions in general has been a struggle for me,” shares Springsteen. “My ex and I had our last big fight parked in my car in a subdivision lot, and it marked the beginning of the end of that relationship. I’ve now realized that a lot of my fights, breakdowns, and tears have happened when I’ve been alone in my car. It’s a safe space for me to be vulnerable.”
Written by Springsteen with Liz Rose, Trannie Anderson, and AJ Pruis, the cleverly-penned Country ballad maps out a vivid picture of a romantic breakdown – one where the crash-and-burn trauma comes well after the wreck. Full of highway-riding double entendre, she details two hearts heading off in different directions and the emotional fumes of being left behind: “This heart’s about to break / right on the interstate / I ain’t gonna make it home / So I’m pullin’ over / Cause I need a shoulder to cry on.” Featuring the weary, desolate sound of a midnight roadside, with beautiful yet distraught vocals and pounding drums to match her pounding heart, “shoulder to cry on” was produced by Chris LaCorte and Springsteen. Perfectly capturing an unexpected turn, strings and steel guitar breeze by as Springsteen’s relationship fades away like taillights in the dark. Watch the visualizer.
“It was important to me that the production on this one wasn’t too bare. I think it would have been easy to give it a really broken down, singer-songwriter feel, but this is a very emotional song for me, and I wanted it to take you on a ride. There’s nothing calm or controlled about the feelings this song represents,” adds Springsteen. “When that chorus hits, it’s completely desperate and I wanted the instrumentation to reflect that. The opposite is true for the bridge. It’s possible to scream, ‘I need a drink but damn it I’m drivin’’ in a moment where you lose control, and it’s also possible to whisper the words when you’re lost and on the verge of giving up with tears streaming down your face. This song represents both sides of that spectrum.”
“shoulder to cry on” follows Springsteen’s first release, “you don’t deserve a country song,” off TWENTY SOMETHING: Messing It Up, which turned heads as the statement-making introduction with spotlights in Billboard’s Makin’ Tracks and January Country Rookie of the Month, Entertainment Tonight’s New Music Releases, among others. “Alana Springsteen Takes Back Her Power,” applauded American Songwriter, as Billboard dubbed it a “confidence bolstering jam,” and Country Now raved, “She chose to come out with a bang.” MusicRow further hailed, “Is this the greatest country song title or what?” Check out the music video premiere of the “empowering, toe-tapping banger” with CMT here.
Currently supporting Adam Doleac’s ‘BARSTOOL WHISKEY WONDERLAND’ Tour, Springsteen is next jetting for a three-show run of European arenas as part of CMA Presents Introducing Nashville during C2C: Country to Country 2023 (March 10-12). Find a full list of tour dates and ticketing information here.
