Singer/songwriter Christian Lee Hutson talks to Atwood about his move from Los Angeles to New York, why he doesn’t write songs about himself, and the immersive world he creates on his third LP, ‘Paradise Pop. 10.’
‘Paradise Pop. 10’ – Christian Lee Hutson
After living in Los Angeles for almost his entire life, Christian Lee Hutson decided it was time to leave.
“I’d lived in LA for so long, and driving around the city, everything was sucking me back into memories from my life,” Hutson tells Atwood Magazine. “It was very hard for me to be present.”
Hutson also began to feel stifled by the disconnection and artificiality he sometimes felt in the city he grew up in. “Los Angeles has this quality about it where it keeps people really separate, and people are living in the fantasies of what they wish their life was,” he continues. “Nothing is actually as it really is in LA.”
So last year, Hutson moved across the country to New York City. The change of scenery has allowed him to look ahead instead of getting caught up in nostalgia. “I don’t really have any memories in New York,” he says. “And I do my best thinking when I’m just walking around.”
New York also provided the perfect setting for Hutson to put together his new album. “I really wanted the record to feel like it was happening now and that it wasn’t a memory factory,” he says of the effect the move had on the music he was making.
The record Hutson is referring to is Paradise Pop. 10, the third LP from the singer-songwriter, which is out now via ANTI- Records. The album is a journey through the lives of Hutson’s fictional characters, with each song unfolding like a chapter in a riveting short story collection.
Musically, Hutson draws on a wider range of sounds on Paradise Pop. 10 than he has on his previous albums. The record still contains plenty of his signature sparse, melodic ballads, but he also ventures into more energetic rock, choosing in certain moments to increase the tempo and turn up the distortion on the guitars.
When compared to his past releases, Hutson also brings more of a sense of immediacy and optimism to his new songs.
“This album feels less like leaning on nostalgia or trying to process the past,” he explains. “Other things I’ve done might have felt like you’re alone in a cab and looking back on your life, trying to make sense of it all. This feels more like your life is happening now, and there are things ahead – it’s a little more hopeful.”
Putting together an album has always been a collaborative process for Hutson. And even though he moved to the East Coast to record Paradise Pop. 10, he was still able to work with some of his super talented friends on the album – including Phoebe Bridgers, Maya Hawke, Marshall Vore, and Joseph Lorge.
“I love working with my friends, and I wanted the recording process to feel like we’re all just hanging out and trying to make something cool together,” he says.
Hutson and Maya Hawke, who co-wrote most of the songs on Paradise Pop. 10, have worked together closely for a long time now (Hutson produced Hawke’s recent album Chaos Angel and also cowrote many of the tracks on the album), and there’s a creative spark that ignites when they write together.
“We like to make each other laugh or see who can come up with a quippy line” he says of the partnership. “And one of us will shout from the kitchen that they thought of something. It’s just really easy because there’s a lot of trust and love there.”
“And it’s the same with Phoebe and Marshall and Joseph,” he continues. “I’ve worked with all of them for so long, and if we weren’t working together, we’d be hanging out anyway.”
Very few of Hutson’s lyrics are pulled directly from his personal life. Instead, he and the other writers he is working with approach songwriting more like fiction writers, conjuring up characters and pondering how they might react if they put them in a certain setting or situation.
“We’ll start with one line,” he says of the songwriting process. “And then we’ll ask, who is saying that? Why are they saying it? What does this character look like, and what kind of mission are they on?”
“Sometimes the characters might have a quality that I have or that someone I love has,” he continues. “But I get kind of bored writing about my own life – I don’t think it’s that interesting. I’m more interested in trying to figure out something subconscious or something that I’ve observed in other people that also teaches me about myself.”
The title Paradise Pop. 10 comes from a road sign Hutson remembers from the area of rural Indiana where he spent time when he was young.
The sign was posted to tell visitors that they were entering the town of Paradise, which had a population of exactly ten people. For Hutson, the title brings to mind a fictional version of that tiny town inhabited by the characters he has created on the album.
“As we were writing and recording the record, a lot of it started to feel like it was a weird little stage play. And similar to the play Our Town, I liked the idea of having this be a little fictional town where all my characters for this record live and interact with one another and are on their own little missions. Each song is a kind of a vignette of these people in my mind that live in this town.”
Hutson immerses listeners in the world he is creating from the very start of the album. On opening track “Tiger,” the curtain lifts to the soft pulse of a piano, and we are introduced to the first character:
Tonight your name is Charlotte
In a play within a play
She tells her husband that she’s happy
But she’s planning her escape
God, you make it look so easy
I forget it isn’t real
That’s why you think nobody trusts you
To say how you really feel
Even in these first few lines, the layers of the tale Hutson is weaving become clear. There is the actress, and then there is the character the actress is playing. And we learn about the motivations and insecurities of both versions of this person in the song’s opening verse.
But there is another character hiding in the shadows – whoever is speaking these words. As the song progresses, the narrator begins to reveal himself and his relationship to the actor:
This is where it all begins
You got your lucky break
I will always be the one
That got out of your way
“The character in this song thinks that he’s a loser, and he’s in love with this person that he sees as someone who really matters,” Huston says of the story that unfolds in “Tiger.” “But he doesn’t see himself that way – he’s just one of the many little cogs in the machine. In his own way, he’s trying to support this person following their dream, so he removes himself from the situation because he doesn’t want to slow them down.”
“It’s sad, because I feel like he’s missing something from the equation,” he continues. “You don’t ever get the sense that anyone ever asked him to leave.”
The melancholic opening track transitions into the grungy guitars of “Carousel Horses,” and it’s clear that the scene has shifted.
“‘Carousel Horses’ came together at the last possible second that we could work on this record,” Hutson recalls. “We said, ‘Why can’t we have distorted guitars now and have fun in the studio?’ And even if it doesn’t make it on the record, we’ll have a fun experiment with this song.”
Not only did the song end up on Paradise Pop. 10, but it also supplies one of the album’s highest energy moments as the electric guitars and massive drums provide the perfect contrast to the record’s quieter moments. Still, even on the upbeat track, Hutson’s lyrics reflect on complex ideas like fate and the intricacies of relationship dynamics:
Like carousel horses
We’re set on our courses
You’re always right on my heels
How could I know how that feels?
When I spoke with Hutson, he was in the middle of rehearsals for his upcoming live performances. After three release shows, one in Los Angeles and two in New York, Hutson will take off on a European tour this fall. He’ll then follow that up with a US tour in the new year.
Along with hitting the road to play his new songs live, Hutson has also released a short film to accompany the release of Paradise Pop. 10. The film, which is directed by Meg Ha, contains short clips of many of the songs on the album, each accompanied by a different scene.
“I wanted to do more of a strange, impressionistic thing where there are all these vignettes with different characters,” Huston says of the film. “So we took snippets from many different songs and had these characters that all have some kind of weird moment with that song. Meg was really helpful at stringing everything together into this dreamy world in a strange, old Victorian house.”
“It feels like the coolest visual expression of my music that we’ve been able to do so far.”
Paradise Pop. 10 closes with “Beauty School,” a summery song full of rhythmic, palm-muted acoustic guitars and buoyant drums.
“I imagine it like a road trip movie,” Hutson says of “Beauty School.” “And it’s kind of the theme of the whole record condensed. This person is trying to break out of living in the past and turn their life around to move toward a future they like, instead of retreading the past and having arguments with ghosts.”
A great short story often ends with one of the characters having a moment of revelation. And in that sense, “Beauty School” provides the perfect closing scene to the story Hutson is telling, as the song’s narrator brings the album to a close with a claim that this is the moment everything will change:
In a mirror universe
Time is moving in reverse
I’m going to turn my life around
Everything is different now
“I think the theme is that you’re living your life right now,” Hutson says to sum up the ideas on Paradise Pop. 10. “You don’t need to live your past life. All of the characters on the record are fighting to figure out how to do that, and some of them are more successful than others.”
“But if they were all one character, which you could argue that maybe they are all different versions of me in some way, then the last song allows them to get what they were trying to get.”
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© Michael Delaney
© Michael Delaney
Paradise Pop. 10
an album by Christian Lee Hutson
