Hi! My name is Lindsay Liebro, and I am a 19-year-old indie pop singer-songwriter. I grew up in Pittsburgh, but I recently moved to Nashville to attend music school and pursue my lifelong dream of being an artist.
Ever since I was little, I have been writing about my feelings, and recently, I released my debut EP which is chock-full of them. My EP is called taller, and I am so proud to say that each of the songs on it is completely self-written.
Throughout my life, I’ve tried to make myself smaller for people. For the kids who teased me in elementary school, for the friends who were envious of my success, for the boy who was (allegedly) 5’7. I tried so hard to be wanted by people who only wanted me conditionally that, in doing so, I lost sight of who I was.
They trounced my spirit, buried me alive, and forgot that my heart was still beating. When the rain came, I dug myself out of the mud using every last bit of strength I had left. I stretched my tired limbs, straightened my spine, and like a Siren, sang out my haunting lines that would be impossible to ignore now.
To me, these songs capture the emotional turmoil that comes with growing up. I wrote them in the liminal space of my late teens when I was so distraught over the people I had let into the deep corners of my life. I learned the hard way that not everyone enters your world to make it better. Some people will walk through your door, make a mess of your heart, and leave its shattered pieces for you to clean up alone. And that’s okay. That’s how you grow. But just know that even in their highest shoes, you will still be taller.
I made these songs with my awesome producer Steve Stout (Lifehouse/Øzwald). I would literally go to his studio in between my piano class and ensemble rehearsal every Tuesday. It felt like my own secret side quest, like I was Hannah Montana or something. Making this project was really special because I felt like I was so in control of what we were making.
Steve just made these songs come to life in ways that I wasn’t sure would be possible, but we did it! He also totally challenged me as a guitar and piano player, making me play parts of the songs and giving me the confidence that I was fully capable of playing them. Those moments made me feel really proud of myself and how far I have come as a musician.
This EP features five songs with “hard time” being the opening track. I wrote “hard time” when I was home for winter break after my first semester of college. I felt SO incredibly lonely. I still hadn’t really made friends at school, I was the most homesick I had ever been, and I was really struggling with performance anxiety at school. This song was kind of my bitter response to all of those feelings.
“i wrote this song” will always be so special to me. I wrote this in March 2021, and it was really surreal for me to record it years later because I no longer felt the hurt I did when I first wrote it. I think that kind of signaled a new chapter of my life which I’m really grateful for.
I think “it’ll get better” is one of the saddest songs I have ever written. I originally wrote this for someone in my life, but they never ended up getting around to listening to it. When we decided it was going to be on the EP, I finished it with the perspective of present me talking to past me, telling my younger self that it will get better. I’m really proud of my reclaiming of the song.
“two ghosts” is a song I wrote when I felt so betrayed by the people I loved and trusted the most. It’s a terrible feeling, and I felt like even after I had tried to remove myself from the situation, I could not escape these people, like two ghosts haunting me.
“no one you can save” is a song for you to sing when you are finally over everything that happened and you realize that you were always better off without them in your life. I am not a princess for someone to save, especially when they can’t even save themself.
Listen to my debut EP taller below, and stream it elsewhere here.
Words by Lindsay Liebro // Follow her on Instagram and TikTok
