Smitty: Absolutely, yeah.
SM: It’s just such a level of love and appreciation that really is unparalleled.
Smitty: Very cool. Now, going back to the album, talk to me about how this whole concept of doing this album began because coming off your self-titled debut album, which I thought was just a total hit, how did you slip into this one?
SM: Well, the first album was a young girl—I’m still a young girl, but I was younger then—discovering her voice a little bit, you know? I came in with practically no performance experience, had three gigs under my belt, and then somebody said “Well, why don’t you make a record?” And I said “Well, why don’t I?” I was curious, I wanted to see where this would go, and I was in the studio and I was terrified and everybody’s heard the story before.
Smitty: Right.
SM: And I wanted to be kind of honest about it and choose songs—just my favorite songs, you know what I mean?
Smitty: Oh yeah.
SM: Nothing—no high art concept. There was no concept in my mind. I just wanted to give people a little musical introduction of myself, this is who I like, this is who I’m influenced by, this is the culture I come from. Here, enjoy, you know?
Smitty: Yeah.
SM: And there was a lot of innocence in it and there was a lot of inexperience in it, and it’s fine. I wasn’t shy about it. I was completely green. The second record we were getting ready to make following two and a half years of really intense touring and playing and growing, and nothing would grow a singer like touring. Nothing would grow a singer like going out there on the road and being in front of audiences and playing with a great band. That was my time to do that. Following the first record, it came out and started doing really well, and I found my life really changing and my music started changing because music has become really the best reflection of my life whereas before, when I was making the first record, music was something really fun, something I did as a hobby. Something I really enjoyed. Music—but it has a fault. Music is not always fun anymore. It’s work and it’s life.
Smitty: True that.
SM: And that is what I wanted to express on the second record, and all the turbulence of the last three years, all the ups and downs, emotionally, physically, just really trying to find myself and find my way, and there were so many firsts about this second record, really. I fell in love for the first time with a great guy and we’ve been together for almost two and a half years.
Smitty: Congratulations.
SM: Thank you. And just trying to figure out what my role is and how I can be a partner in a committed, serious relationship ‘cause I was like a kid before then, just playing around with guys and not really caring. Suddenly this thing happened to me and it came out totally unexpectedly. The first record, came out, started doing really well, the pressure mounted, I was in school full-time, I was trying to still….with the touring and with all the stress, to stay in a social life, I was trying to keep my band happy, I was trying to keep my teachers happy, producers happy, everybody happy, and a lot of the times at my own expense. So I had to kind of slow down and try to figure out what it is that makes me happy and that’s why we called the record Make Someone Happy.
Smitty: Ahh…
SM: After one of the most important tracks on that record, which I heard, again, two and a half years ago when the relationship was starting, and I just broke down in tears, and that was because superficially that song is a love song, but if you go deeper into the lyrics, it’s really about what it is that makes us happy.
Smitty: Mm…
SM: And, you know, “make someone happy and you’ll be happy too,” which is the core lyric. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true because you find a lot of artists who dedicate their lives to entertaining audiences and making them happy and they are themselves very unhappy individuals.
Smitty: Mm, yes.
SM: So the whole point of the record was kind of emotional, kind of highs and lows, and just trying to find myself and trying to understand my life, and so the song selection wasn’t actually very hard. I knew exactly what I was feeling and it wasn’t hard to find those songs that reflected what I was feeling.
Smitty: Very cool and I think that’s one of the striking things about this record that will attract so many people to it is that some of the things that you just mentioned are commonalities among people.
SM: Sure.
Smitty: In entertainment and at the other end of the spectrum as well.
SM: Absolutely. I mean, what we do in North America—and people outside of North America—but in North America especially, we work so hard. We work more than anybody else in the world.
Smitty: Yeah.
SM: And when we don’t work, we take care of people.
Smitty: Right.
SM: People take care of kids, people take care of elderly parents, and that’s something that’s really starting to be a real issue in North America with the Boomers and their parents and everything else, and at some point people have to—and in my own life, my parents live for their children in a lotta ways.
Smitty: Yeah.
SM: We, the children, live for our parents.
Smitty: You know, you’re right.
SM: Trying to make them happy, trying to satisfy them with grades, with achievements, with everything else, with attention.
Smitty: Yes.
