It was smack dab in the midday heat of an Upstate New York July when I connected with songwriter Sydney Worthley via Zoom. About a week earlier, I had seen her play to a whooping, dancing crowd of all ages to kick off the summer concert series at a local venue. While it was billed as a Taylor Swift sing-along, she scattered in some originals, causing her merch table to be flocked with brand new fans scrambling to grab an early CD copy of her new album. She joked onstage that many of the kids probably had to ask their parents what “burning CDs” even meant.
Although the crowd at this event trended younger, her new record It Was Nice While It Lasted has more mature themes, a 12-track deep dive into coming of age in your 20s, filled with heartbreak, youth, and reckoning. Over the course of our call, we chatted about her inspirations for this project, her writing style, and her great love of the ’80s aesthetic. After holding onto the record for four years, Sydney disclosed that this is the project she’s most proud of thus far.
“This is where I stopped thinking about what other people wanted to hear and kind of just figured out what I wanted my album to sound like,” she admitted. “I think in the past, I was trying to pull from a lot of different influences that people told me I sounded like and I was basing everything off of that.”
Her last proper release was the 2020 EP, Rose Colored Glasses, about which she says, “I got a lot of comments about sounding like Florence and The Machine, so that was my big influence at the time. I also started listening to a lot of Maggie Rogers, so a lot of her production elements I wanted to take into consideration. I think I did that more with this album than I did with the EP, and that’s part of the reason why I’m so proud of it. I tried to really hone in on what elements I wanted. It feels like the truest version of myself right now.”
Part of that authenticity comes from Sydney’s steering of her own production, a first for her.
“It started with [the song] ‘How Soon Is Now?’,” she recalls. “I had this idea that was heavily influenced off Maggie Rogers’ production style, specifically from Heard It In A Past Life. I really wanted to incorporate different synthesisers and percussion elements. I kind of just sat with it and tested things out, seeing what I could do.
“The last seven songs I started producing on my own before bringing them to Nada Recording Studio (Montgomery, NY). A lot of the elements I [produced] in my basement are on the final product.”
‘How Soon Is Now?’, one of three advance singles off the record, features big, sparkly production, with twinkly percussion that builds into huge drum crashes for the chorus. It’s all pulled together neatly with ’80s-style synths and retro “oh, oh, ohhh” backing vocals. She encapsulates the album in this era from glittery cover art to an ’80s prom themed album release show.
“I love the disco balls, I love the glitter, I love the color scheme,” she beams. “I pulled influences from that and wanted to incorporate that into the album. It’s funny because when I first started writing the album, you can definitely tell the first five songs we recorded were not pulled from ’80s influences. But I think the revival is coming back with Chappell Roan and Kate Bush’s song getting really popular again. I love that style of production.”
While there are pre-21st century nods throughout the record, there are plenty of comparisons to be made between Sydney and female indie and rock stars of the present. We of course talked at length about Maggie Rogers and Taylor Swift, but in listening to the project I was thrilled to hear some elements of Phoebe Bridgers in her ultra-specific lyricism and heartbreaking metaphors.
‘Heart-Shaped Mess,’ another single, immediately gives off those vibes with a melancholy acoustic and the initial lines, ‘I’m making wishes in the mall fountain/Throwing pennies but I lost count when/I remembered our first date here/ I was sixteen, now you’re my every tear,‘ not to mention the haunted house line in the second verse.
Illustrative, soul-baring lyrics are a centrepiece of the record, but one track in particular was especially raw for Sydney to pen.
“The title track, ‘It Was Nice While It Lasted,’ was the hardest to write because I think it was the most vulnerable one. All the lyrics are from real conversations and I wanted to really perfect it. I think I re-wrote that song maybe three times with different variations of the lyrics.”
Ultimately, it’s that gut-wrenching truth mixed expertly with the sweet pop that makes this record so special. “I think it pays off to be vulnerable and that’s something I’ve struggled with writing my songs,” she admits. “I dove in head first with this one and I’m really excited to hear what people think.”
Listen to It Was Nice While It Lasted on Spotify and Apple Music, and check out more of Sydney Worthley here.
