Track Premiere: Kelly Hoppenjans – “If I Had You (Love Letter From A Padded Cell)”
Posted: by The Editor
Looking for new music? Kelly Hoppenjans is the name you ought to be putting on your radar. The Nashville based singer-songwriter creates music that challenges traditional gender norms and stereotypes. Her newest single, “If I Had You” is a twangy infusion of folk and pop rock. Don’t let the contagiously catchy track fool you though, there is a very meaningful message beneath those layers of sun kissed guitars and synth beats.
“If I Had You” is about reclaiming negative connotations that go along with pinning emotional women as “crazy”. This is only one of the many feminist themes that will be featured on Hoppenjans’ debut album, Ok, I Feel Better Now, out on October 18th (pre-orders now live). After picking up a guitar at age 12, Hoppenjans had few non-male musicians to look up to. Now, she is not only gaining a sense of agency through her music, but creating a space for others to follow suit.
Hoppenjans shared this statement about the track: “I co-wrote this song with my friend Jess Kenney, and it’s partly inspired by how many times we’ve heard guys describe their ex-girlfriends as ‘crazy’ – it’s not a nice word! The lines can be very blurred between ‘love’ and ‘obsession.’ And calling a woman ‘crazy’ is an easy way to dismiss the way she is feeling by making her seem overly emotional or irrational. The album as a whole deals with the experience of being a woman in the world and accessing our power as women. In this song, I use extreme hyperbole to take control of the narrative around the so-called ‘crazy ex-girlfriend’ stereotype and prove a point: it can be very confusing and potentially damaging for young women when our society continually glorifies obsessive love in pop culture, while often dismissing women who express their negative emotions as some form of ‘crazy.’”
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Emily Kitchin / @deathnap4cutie
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