Thea Gustafsson AKA: Becky and the Birds has announced her new self-produced debut album, Only Music Makes Me Cry Now, will drop on November 15th via 4AD. Along with the record’s announcement, Gustafsson has also shared the new single “I made my baby cry,” accompanied by visualizer, made by Gustafsson. As Gustafsson explained: “I wrote this song after a breakup. To me breakups are the worst, seeing the other people die inside, knowing that you caused that death.” “I made my baby cry,” follows lead-single Earlier this year, Gustaffson shared the album’s lead single “When She Holds Me.”

In 2021. At that time, her creative process was largely informed by a wide array of sources, including: insight from past collaborations with Dijon, Seinabo Sey, and Lapsley; obscure Bandcamp deep-dives; visits to live sets at clubs and dive bars across her two homes at that time, London and her native Stockholm; a variety of media fixations (including Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine, Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, and Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth); and the crushing vortex of emotions she had been encountering in the aftermath of a life-altering breakup. During that time, she needed to “let it all out to take it all in,” motivating her to return to the studio to wipe the slate completely clean and fully process everything she was experiencing. The songs she crafted during this period, which later became OMMMCN, therefore allow listeners to follow her through that time of intense healing, with the record’s exploratory, desperate, passionate, romantic, and heart-wrenchingly vulnerable lyrical backbone supported by a varied collection of sampled audio-bites from her everyday life (from old demos and phone recordings to natural city noise).

Becky and the Birds
ONLY MUSIC MAKES ME CRY NOW

Pre-order Only Music Makes Me Cry by Becky and the Birds Now HERE