Singer-songwriter Olivia O’Brien releases her highly anticipated new EP everywhere i go, there i am today, and with it, she offers a powerful and vulnerable glimpse into her emotional landscape. This 5-track EP follows the release of two emotionally charged singles, “lower” and “all the time,” both of which address the complexities of mental health. The release of “lower” in September coincided with National Suicide Prevention Month, while “all the time” was unveiled during World Mental Health Day in October, further emphasizing Olivia’s ongoing commitment to destigmatizing mental health conversations. Both tracks have been praised for their emotional depth and transparency. “all the time” addresses the dangerous cycle of addiction and self-deception, with Olivia offering a candid exploration of how seemingly harmless habits can spiral into harmful patterns. She shares, “I worry all the time (no pun intended) that I, myself, will slip into these patterns if I am not careful. This song serves as a reminder.”
On the reasons why she left a major label Olivia shared: “I just wanted to have control. I don’t think I had really any control in my previous situation and when you don’t have control, there’s a lot of other factors: it’s not just the fact that I can’t do what I want, it’s that I don’t know what I want because I have all these people telling me what I should be and what I should do and what people want from me and what’s going to do well right now.
I realized that most people don’t know what they’re talking about, especially now in the music industry because of social media, people keep thinking they found some magical Like formula for how to make a song go viral or have a moment and it just never works. This is not how to garner an authentic, like, audience and make people connect with you.
I was really confused with what I was doing, what I wanted to do artistically and beyond. I just wanted to not have anyone really telling me what to do essentially.”
On her success “strategies and formulas” she added:
“Literally every single thing that ever happened to me was a complete accident. That’s why I don’t believe in all of these magic formulas. Cause I’m just like, if it happens, it happens. That’s how it’s been with me. I’m not like, I’ve never set really concrete, numeric goals or like achievements and I never thought this year I really want to have two top 10 singles and I don’t measure my success or measure anything by those standards. Maybe that’s because what happened to me was really serendipitous.
My song “I Hate You I Love You” just blew up out of nowhere. It was the first song I ever released. I didn’t do anything to make that happen. The song was put out and I was like, Oh, now it’s a hit. I didn’t have to do anything, which sounds crazy. Obviously I wrote the song and that’s work.
But it just felt like it was something that was supposed to happen. Amen. After that, everything that happened to me, my song Jocelyn blew up kind of, and that was because I made some TikTok videos, which didn’t even feel like I was doing anything substantial at the time. I was just like, this is funny, and this is cool, and whatever happens happens.
And people just connect with it. It feels like everything was kind of an accident and that’s why I don’t take myself so seriously and what I do. I don’t take it all seriously at all.
But it’s tough too, because I’m about to turn 25 and I feel like my whole career was kind of built on me being really young and the social media part just came really easily to me. I was not afraid to be kind of embarrassing and cringy and all these things. And now that I’m more of a real adult I’m having a harder time with the whole social media thing because trying to create some kind of authenticity it’s the hardest thing, you can’t create authenticity from nowhere.”
