The years we spend at college are filled with plenty of firsts. First dates, first loves, and ultimately first break-ups. Singer/songwriter Allison Weiss can help you through the third.
“I want to make fun music to listen to but then at the same time, the only things I really know how to write about are heartbreak and the ends of relationships,” said Weiss when she visited the College on Saturday April 20, days after releasing her first full-length album, Say What You Mean.
Weiss’s EP, …Was Right All Along, was the first fully-funded album on Kickstarter and is often what she is best known for. Kickstarter is the fundraising platform responsible for financing Amanda Palmer’s latest album with the Grand Theft Orchestra which debuted in the top ten Billboard 200. Even more recently, it raised over $5.7 million for a Veronica Mars movie due out in theaters sometime in 2014.
Weiss’s new album, which was also funded through Kickstarter, consists of 10 songs, nine of which are new and harken that feeling of loneliness after a fresh break up. The song “One Way Love” is a perfect example of Weiss’s ability to mix dark lyrics with a happy, pop-punk melody.
“Every time I say that the song is called ‘One Way Love,’ everybody assumes that it’s going to be a song about unrequited love,” she said. “When I wrote it, I was thinking about how I had just gone through a breakup, and I was right back where I started. It was like I was on a round-trip, and I want the one way sort of thing.”
Holding a degree in graphic design, Weiss recalled her trepidation as a 20-year-old student. “When I was 20, I wasn’t sure yet if I was going to do it for real. I was in school, and I was getting my degree. I was playing shows sometimes. I was like ‘I don’t know! This seems like a thing that’s working out’ and then as the years passed, I saw all these cool things start to happen. I was making friends with people who I really respected growing up, and I was seeing that the hard work that I was putting in was paying off.”
Her reflection on her own self doubts as an undergrad reflect what many collegiettes here at the College feel: Are we on the right path? Weiss, who recently turned 26, said, “I would probably go back in time to my 20-year-old self and I would say, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing! Because it’s working, and it will work.’”
Great advice to gets us through the end of the semester and finals week!
Photo credits: Close-up photo: Lindsey Byrnes, Stage photo: Caroline English