Oversharing with Juli Strawbridge: The Creative Process of a Singer-Songwriter
Image Credit: Juli Strawbridge
Songbird had the privilege to interview indie pop singer-songwriter Juli Strawbridge. Juli has released several songs, including two albums, Oversharing and Jokes About the Rapture. She discussed her songwriting process and how she weaves deep and personal themes into her work.
Juli has been writing, producing, and recording her own music (along with some for other artists) since 2018, but initially started writing songs when she was seven. She decided to take songwriting seriously during her freshman year of college in 2017.
“It really just hit me like a ton of bricks,” Juli said. “My music is very steeped in the ideas of my upbringing and education, so in my songs you’ll find a lot of references to ancient mythology, theology, and the type of philosophy that’s really just overthinking everything (or is that what all philosophy is?).” Juli sees making music as a way for her to organize and express her thoughts and experiences. At the moment, she’s enjoying rock climbing, reading, and working at a senior living facility with people who have dementia, and she says all of these things “deeply shape the way I think and therefore the way I write.”
Aside from her own experiences, Juli draws musical inspiration from a wide range of artists whose style she classifies as “weird pop”, such as Jon Bellion, Julia Michaels, and Jack Antonoff. “However, these days I find my sound aligns more with folkier, darker artists like Father John Misty, Sufjan Stevens, and Phoebe Bridgers, with the occasional streak of funky Remi Wolf pop,” Juli explained. “I was raised singing bluegrass and jazz and the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack, and then my musical coming of age was Ingrid Michaelson, Regina Spektor, and Ben Folds, so all of those slip in occasionally.”
Juli had a lot to say about working in a musical capital like Nashville. “The cool thing about Nashville that I always want to encourage newcomers about is the fact that there are always music people to find, and so many of them are also new and open to working with anyone,” she said. “There is no excuse here when you first start because of how many resources and community groups exist for music.” However, she also noted the difficulty of being heard over so many other voices. “In Nashville, your dreams and often your voice are not special,” she said. Juli has been humbled but also inspired by that realization. “I am so grateful that I didn’t go to a local music college because so many people I’ve met have had to deal with the ‘small fish syndrome.’” Instead, Juli found her voice in a more diverse community. “I truly valued my experience at a college where most people were not interested in the same things, because we were all able to inspire each other’s respective crafts with our different perspectives.”
Juli expressed her commitment to staying true to her artistic vision against pressure to make the “big break” at any cost. “There was a real death of my dream of doing music as a career when I realized I was not interested in climbing up the networking ladder or working on songs I didn’t connect with or uprooting everything in Nashville to chase professional songwriting [in LA],” she said. Juli has instead chosen to focus on working with people she knows and respects instead of burning herself out by chasing connections.
That commitment to sincerity comes through Juli’s songwriting. Juli is an intentional listener, noticing the complexity of both production and lyrics. “I’m drawn to music with a lot to find in it,” she said. “I hope the people that listen to my music are just as intent and curious about how the metaphors play out, interesting parts of the production, and just truly listening the way that I listen to artists I enjoy.” Her advice to any aspiring songwriters is to “be specific in your songs because the most relatable thing to write about is authentic emotion.”
Juli’s songwriting process usually begins with a title or concept that she fills out into a story. When she wants to release something, she’ll work on production. While it can take a bit for her to sit down and begin the recording process, once she does, she always finds herself “swept up in the creative process, testing sounds, and building like a kid with Legos.” She loves conceptualizing albums to organize her scattered ideas. After gathering enough lyrics and concepts, she’ll make a vague deadline for release and begin amassing the necessary help to release the final record. “I show songs to my friends and family to see if there’s any glaring issues or specific parts that a first-time listener would notice,” she explained. “I’ve often received very valuable feedback, but mainly the process of showing it to people is just about me feeling like the songs are real.” Once the album is released, she revels in “the feeling like I have a thing that I can say I did.”
This was another point of her advice to creatives. “Just release stuff. Like, just do it. It is so important to your creative process to call a product finished by laying it out to the public. I truly believe you can’t grow creatively if you never end a phase and walk away from it.” Thankfully, with YouTube and the Internet, it’s easier than ever to get started and even get professional help with creative work. Juli emphasized that at first, it’s less about having the best equipment or ideas but more “about being formed into the person you are supposed to be through developing taste, perspective, and skill.”
Juli has definitely developed a unique perspective as a writer. Her songs often involve common themes told from a more creative, unusual, or intellectual angle. She compared her songwriting process to writing an essay, where she has a thesis or idea she wants to expand upon and writes to figure out what she wants to say. “Sometimes it goes in directions I don’t expect, and I pull the thread until I find an unlikely end,” she shared. “I definitely think the things I’ve read or am reading–usually nonfiction or strange stories from history or science facts–those all make it into what I’m writing.”
After discussing her general songwriting process, we turned to the specifics behind her albums, starting with Oversharing, released in 2020. Juli explained she wrote it as a senior in college and believed it was the best thing she would ever make. She recalled many memories surrounding the development of the album, some of which were worked into the songs themselves as voice memo samples, from the sound of a can opener at a party to a metronome she heard while on spring break in Florida. “That album is always gonna hold such a formative part of my life and my sound,” she admitted. The song “Fire Either Way” on that album has some of her favorite lyrics she’s ever written.
Jokes About the Rapture followed three years later, but Juli had started writing some of its songs back in 2019. “It’s an album about those moments when something takes you out of the daily numbness to reality–if you experience loss or anything that shakes you–when you glimpse the depth of evil and darkness in the world and also glimpse the height of God’s holiness,” Juli explained. Writing the album helped her work through the grief following the death of a friend and her father. “That was the first project that held any ideas this dark, and I was grateful for that creative outlet,” she shared.
Juli explained the references to faith in her work and how she hopes her audience will receive them. “I’ve always used music to work through theology I struggle with and to ponder ideas about God,” she explained. “My songs are often very bold and vulnerable things I’m working through– “Jokes About the Rapture”, “Even Abraham”, and “Amber Alert” being primary examples. I hope some people can relate to reaching into the dissonance between God’s love and His terrifying power and wrath, especially when it’s in the midst of grief.” Grief crops up in “Reincarnation,” another of her favorites. “It was a huge undertaking to try to explain the experience of losing someone too young, and the questions I imagine asking them as I get older when they won’t, and I’m very proud of sticking with the song and how it turned out.”
After Jokes About the Rapture, Juli released an EP titled After the Revelation, containing four songs originally planned to be included on the album but ultimately decided to omit. “The separate collection gave time for reflection and less overwhelm for both me and the listener, and I think those songs fit into Jokes About the Rapture, but in a slightly different way.”
When asked what’s next on the horizon, Juli said she’s tentatively planning on releasing another EP or short album this year. “Although I’m very long-winded, so who knows?” she added. “These days, I mainly just release music to document or ‘close’ seasons of my life, enjoy the process, and to feel satisfied with the act of perfecting a concept.”
We concluded the interview by asking for Juli’s listening recommendations. “I’m really loving comedian Mae Martin’s album ‘I’m a TV,’ Samia’s ‘Bovine Excision,’ and Father John Misty's new album Mahashmashana–it's sonically phenomenal and really gets at how modern people regret the world they created.”
You can stream Juli’s music on your favorite platform and follow her Instagram for more of her thoughts, songs-in-progress, and behind-the-scenes.