Making It Out Of Retrograde with Ebony Loren
Photography by Julien Carr
The expression “walk before you run,” or in this case, “speak before you sing,” never applied to acoustic-pop artist Ebony Loren, who discovered her singer-songwriter capabilities at the early age of five. Originally from Milwaukee, the Chicago-based musician is using the city’s diverse music scene as her playground to expand on the jazz and R&B elements she flawlessly blends into each of her projects.
With edifying lyrics (“Cause I was crying yesterday / But look at me today / It has been so long / Since I wrote a sad song”), Ebony doesn’t shy away from vulnerability in her songwriting. By allowing her vocals to take center stage while simultaneously embedding her positive persona within her storytelling, Ebony affords her listeners the opportunity to transcend into a feel-good state of being, and her latest single “Retrograde” is no exception.
We sat down with the rising artist to discuss where she finds her inspiration, her newest track “Retrograde,” her unanticipated viral success, and what’s lined up next.
For all those newly introduced to you, can you share a little about yourself and how you got into music?
My name is Ebony Loren…. I'm originally from Milwaukee and I moved to Chicago for school, where I currently attend Columbia College. I've been doing music pretty much ever since I learned how to speak. I've been singing and I began writing songs around the age of five, not real songs, but just writing things and I probably wrote my first real song around the age of 10. Music is kind of something I've always done. There wasn't ever anything else I wanted to do. I was good at a few other things, but music was the one thing that I just consistently always loved. So I taught myself guitar and piano through YouTube videos and learning stuff by ear.
You mentioned that you were self-taught. How did you go about you finding your sound?
Finding my sound. Well, I feel like your sound isn't something you have to go out and find, it kind of just comes out of you. It does have a lot to do with what you take in, you know, when you're listening to music, the types of music that you like, what you listen to growing up, and the things you're surrounded by; all of those things will heavily affect what you end up sounding like. One thing that I feel heavily influenced me is jazz because I went to an arts high school where everyone had a major and I was a vocal major. I was in choirs and I was singing a lot of vocal jazz harmony because I was in a vocal jazz group. I listened to a lot of different music as well, music from all different countries. I love Spanish music, K-pop, and R&B pop-folk music. I like a lot of different things and being experimental, so I would say I'm still finding myself. I still have a lot more experimenting to do, and I don't want to put myself in a box. I could pretty much do whatever I'd want to.
We need to have a deeper discussion about your R&B and jazz influences; what I love most about your music is the seamless blend of these two genres and how you can hear it so transparently in your work. Are there any musicians you can credit as inspirations?
I would say I have a lot, so the ones I list are of no particular importance but just ones that I can think of because there are plenty. A musician I love is Bruno Major. There's not a single song I don't like of his. I've always liked Daniel Caesar. And there are a lot of newer, up-and-coming artists who are around my age as well who I really like in terms of songwriting, like lyrically. So like Lizzy McAlpine, and a newer artist, Leith Roth, who's blowing up everywhere right now. There's a lot, I could go on.
You mentioned that you're originally from Milwaukee and now you're in the city for school. Do you think Chicago, if at all, has influenced your sound, music, or process?
It has definitely influenced the trajectory of my career because Milwaukee is very hip-hop-heavy. There aren't a lot of people doing what I do there. I mean, there definitely are, just not a lot because there's not a large community of people. If I would try and go to any studio in Milwaukee, a lot of them wouldn't know exactly how to deal with a girl and her guitar coming in because they deal with a lot of producers and hip-hop. But Chicago is a lot more diverse in terms of creativity, so I've been able to find a lot of people who are like-minded and able to collaborate, see new types of creatives, and form different connections being in a bigger city.
You just dropped your latest single titled “Retrograde.” Can you talk about the meaning behind it and how it feels to share it with the world?
“Retrograde” is basically about a dying relationship. Whether it be a romantic relationship, or a friendship even, it just talks about that feeling you get when you can tell the relationship is falling apart. You know there's nothing specific that caused it, and there's not much you can do to put things back together, but over time as things change, you can feel the distance between you and the other person growing. I think that this song is something that people will relate to in a lot of different ways because everyone has had the experience of growing apart from someone they were once close with. It's a part of growing and growing up. Sometimes you'll lose certain people and not know why until later, but that's what Retrograde is about, and I'm super excited for everyone to hear it!
Speaking of your singles, your cover of “O Pato” gained you (much deserved) viral success on Tik Tok. Can you talk about that experience?
Yeah, that was super fun for me because this was almost a year ago. I haven't even been consistently posting on TikTok for a year. It'll be a year in December, and that was my first video to ever go viral. To overnight get hundreds of thousands of views, it's special to me. One, it's jazz, which I love, and Bossa Nova, which I love, right? It was just so cool to see people around my age, people who use TikTok, liking this genre and appreciating it. So yeah, that's one thing I loved. It was a genre that I love, and also the version that I did. The song is originally in Portuguese because it is Bossa Nova, but I did the Spanish version just because I speak Spanish and I don't speak Portuguese. So I was doing the version that Natalia La Fourcade did, who is one of my all-time favorite artists. So just the fact that something inspired by her did so well, everything was perfect for me because it's all of the things I love combined into this one song. And I was so happy that that was the one that could do well.
What do you have planned for the remainder of 2021 and moving forward? Any new singles we can look forward to?
I have a lot of unreleased music, so we're still figuring out which one is going to be next, but I do plan on releasing a couple more singles, and then eventually working my way up to some sort of EP or album. But for now, I'm just doing singles.