On the latest episode of idobi Warped Radio, Chandler Leighton opened up about embracing her multifaceted sound, reflecting on her sonic evolution and teasing her latest project yet—a new EP set to arrive this summer that she says she is “so aligned with.”
Leighton, who first made waves as a contestant on American Idol and later through her feature with ILLENIUM, has never been one to stay boxed into one genre. “You look at people like Billie Eilish… then you look at her follow-up albums, and they went from folk to other experimental stuff,” she shares. “You look at Taylor Swift, and she’s even gone from country to pop music. And I think it’s beautiful to evolve as an artist. And I think for a long time, when I said I was younger, when I did American Idol, I felt small. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, but I think I was just scared to sing, like really open up.”
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After years of playing different “characters” in her music, Leighton says this upcoming release feels like a true reflection of everything that’s shaped her. “I want to incorporate every genre that got me here. I wanted to basically have every genre that got me here and like keep those little parts of me in this new music… How do I mix electronica, rock, alt, and singer-songwriter pop into one genre?” she explains. “So I didn’t want it to feel like this drastic switch. Like it’s really not. Once you start to hear this project, you hear the electronic in it, and you hear the dance music, and you also hear the singer-songwriter pop. So it was really fucking fun to make this project. Like, I had the time of my damn life.”
With Chandler Leighton’s new project arriving in tandem with her Warped Tour debut, listen to her full idobi Warped Radio episode here.
