Search - Kate Voegele :: A Fine Mess

You could say Kate Voegele is an overachiever. At 22 years old, the Cleveland, Ohio native has spent the better part of the last two years juggling life as a full-time singer-songwriter, part-time actress and a college student, rarely pausing to take a breath. "Multi-tasking has always been my thing," she says. "For my first album, I somehow scheduled my classes around recording sessions, and still got a 4.0 grade point average. Then I took a break from school and went on the road, but halfway through, I got offered One Tree Hill completely unexpectedly. That was when life got ridiculous." Ridiculous in the sense that Voegele went from being a complete unknown to a TV star, and from a girl writing songs in her dorm room to a bonafide recording artist with legions of loyal fans, all in less than a year. Voegele is still pinching herself just to make sure it's really happening. "Sometimes I look around and wonder what I've done to deserve all this," she says with a laugh. It was by virtue of her talent, vivacious personality and sheer determination that Voegele scored the tie-in of a lifetime: playing the spunky Mia on popular teen drama One Tree Hill, but performing her own music. Thanks to that confluence of events, her MySpace Records debut, Don't Look Away, sold close to a quarter million copies, climbed to No. 4 on the iTunes chart and sent Voegele upstream to Interscope (which has a distribution partnership with MySpace). Now Voegele is seeing her musical wish list come true with A Fine Mess, her second serving of undeniable pop-rock charm, produced by Mike Elizondo (Maroon 5, Fiona Apple) and scheduled for release in May 2009. Brimming with optimism, first time independence and the wisdom that comes from one too many broken hearts, A Fine Mess is the continuation of a road Voegele was destined to travel, and, like every milestone in her career thus far, she navigates it with gusto. "It's easy to get caught up in trying to write hit songs when you're working on a second record," says Voegele. "But for me, it's about remembering why I started expressing myself through music in the first place -- how it came from a need to write and there was nothing mechanical about it. Those are the best songs, when I'm not thinking about it, which usually means that I write at really inconvenient times." In Voegele's nomadic world, that means songs penned on airplanes and tour buses, cafés in Wilmington, North Carolina and hotel rooms in Los Angeles. "I got all this inspiration and a bunch of ideas from a year and a half on the road," she explains. "I've traveled to so many different places and had all these unexpected adventures with great people -- that's where this body of work comes from. Case in point: "Manhattan From The Sky," a song which inspired the album's title. The piano-driven pure pop number, says Voegele, came to her from 30,000 feet above New York City. "I was just thinking about how Manhattan looks like a little piece of Lego," Voegele recalls, "but once you' re inside, it's totally crazy and messy and there's a wonderful chaos going on all around the city." The song debuted on the March 23rd episode of One Tree Hill, in what Voegele calls, "the most amazing set-up ever." She explains: "The coolest thing is how they worked the song into the show so that it enhanced the scene, and how the scene enhanced the song. So the viewer can watch Mia and a character named Chase talk about what it's like to see a city from the sky one week, and the next week see Mia sing 'Manhattan From The Sky' in the studio, then they can go on iTunes and buy the song. It's great to be working with people who are so genuinely excited about the music." Voegele had her pick of producers for A Fine Mess, but was fixated on one in particular. "I told the label that I'd love to work with whoever did Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine, and I'm also obsessed with Rilo Kiley's Under The Blacklight. Turns out, Mike Elizondo worked on both of those records. "To work with somebody who's able to execute what you're hearing in your head, it's not an easy thing to find," she says. "But when Mike was done, I was like, 'Oh my God, this is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote it on a napkin!'" The album introduces itself with "99 Times," a gritty, hard-driving song that sees Voegele lashing out at the common frienemy. "It's about the different emotions you experience after finding out somebody you're close to has been feeding you a story that isn't true," she says. "You end up feeling stupid and pissed off and I guess I dealt with those emotions by putting on some black boots, messing up my hair, turning up the distortion on my guitar and getting in front of the mic to pretend I was Chrissy Hynde. That was pretty much all it took." On the sweeping "Sweet Silver Lining," she sings of finding hope in times of grave misfortune. "Once I got out into the world, I saw that bad things happen to really good people -- people who were close to me," she explains of the track and its delicate clockwork rhythm. "I wrote it for myself, but hope it will inspire others." Voegele's attempt at a love song is the ballad "Forever and Almost Always," which she says matter-of-factly, is "one of most depressing songs on the record. It's about being in a relationship with somebody where you know their heart's not in it as much as yours, and how you're fed this story your whole life about everyone living happily ever after, but there's always that little bit of doubt. It's like that scene in the Sex And The City movie, where Carrie tells Charlotte's little girl, 'You know this is just a fairytale, right?' Its true!" Among the album's many highlights is "Angel," which disavows peoples' perception of Voegele as an eternal good girl with a pounding piano melody that brings to mind Tori Amos' "Cornflake Girl" and Fiona Apple's "Criminal." "The whole idea that you have to be tortured to be an artist, it drove me nuts," she declares. "That frustration is what the song is about, where I say, maybe I didn't have a coke addiction or spend my nights getting hammered and dancing on tables, but I'm not this untouchable perfect girl on a pedestal." Along similar lines, Voegele strikes back at the smarmy pickup with the country-esque, "Talkin' Smooth," on which she snaps: "Did you replace the last two dozen names with mine? / Was I love you, baby, second nature by now? / Because it sounds awful rehearsed when it leaves your mouth." Ouch! "It's a fun song that's kind of sexy," she says. "It's saying, 'I'm on to you, in case you're an asshole.' Because so many guys are really good at B.S.-ing you, but I'm always suspicious of anyone that's talking smooth. It takes a lot to convince me that someone's genuine." But don't worry, Voegele hasn't completely abandoned her good-natured side or her optimism. She's simply come to terms with the fine mess her world has turned into. "I could come up with a million reasons why that's an appropriate title," she says, "but really, it's just about how unpredictable life can be. It's a total rollercoaster that's out of your control and you have to be able to embrace the crazy ups and downs. That's your only option, pretty much, so you might as well enjoy it."