Cat Burns on coming of age and her debut album 'early twenties'

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Being a young adult when you're just coming into your own - it's full of excitement and worry.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALONE")

CAT BURNS: (Singing) Coffee trips alone, dinner booked for one. I've never even been on a date. I find it hard to open up.

RASCOE: British singer-songwriter Cat Burns has captured so much of what that time of life is like with her debut album "early twenties."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALONE")

BURNS: (Singing) I don't want to be alone forever...

RASCOE: Relationships, uncertainty about the future, and the challenge of really getting to know yourself, how your brain works - it's all there, and it goes deep. And we wanted to get to know Cat Burns by going deep on one song in particular. She joins us now from London. Welcome to the show.

BURNS: Hello. Thank you for having me.

RASCOE: Let's just jump right into the song, "this is what happens."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS")

BURNS: (Singing) It takes a lot for me to leave my house these days. It seems that I would rather be alone than socialize - oh, my. I haven't left my room in, like, six months. It's my cocoon...

RASCOE: It's about anxiety, which a lot of people suffer from, including myself. How did you come to write the song?

BURNS: I was actually in LA when I wrote it. With a lot of songs, I really like juxtaposition. I like kind of having maybe sad lyrics over quite happy chords.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS")

BURNS: (Singing) So I - I get it in my head...

I think in that moment, I was struggling with being in a different country because I'm such a homebody, and I was feeling super anxious. So then the song kind of just wrote itself. There are definitely loads of periods of time in my life where I can kind of become a little bit of a ghost where I just stay inside and just feel too scared to leave my house. So I kind of wanted to make a song about that, but do it in a fun and lighthearted way because if you don't laugh, you'll cry.

RASCOE: You have to laugh to keep from crying. Sometimes you got laugh to keep from crying.

BURNS: Yeah (laughter).

RASCOE: I mean, the thing about it - like, that juxtaposition of this very upbeat, catchy tune. Is it also that you want people to be able to listen to it without feeling down, like, to bring more people into it?

BURNS: I always encourage people to feel their feelings because I think it's always important to do that, but I also want to encourage people to know that things are only as deep as we make it. The song feels lighthearted because I'm trying to kind of be like, yeah, I feel all these things and I feel anxious a lot/most of the time. But it doesn't have to be any deeper than that. There's only power in what we give things power to.

RASCOE: Let's move on and hear this upbeat chorus about anxiety.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS")

BURNS: (Singing) This is what happens when you're anxious, so damn anxious. I'm so anxious all the time.

RASCOE: Does music help with your anxiety?

BURNS: Absolutely. It's definitely a course of therapy for me.

RASCOE: Do you get anxious about performing?

BURNS: I get slightly nervous right before I'm to go onstage. When I'm onstage, I'm fine. I get more anxious about the socializing after. Yeah, I'm thinking about, oh, gosh, who's going to be in my dressing room when I get back? Who am I going to have to say awkward hellos to? Who am I going to have to, like, smile at that I don't know? I'm overthinking all the interactions after the performance, but when I'm onstage, I'm good.

RASCOE: And I could definitely relate to this last verse as well. It gets really personal.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS")

BURNS: (Singing) My intrusive thoughts consume my mind. I know my brain can be unkind, but...

RASCOE: I know my brain can be unkind. Like, that's such a powerful lyric. And I think a lot of people can relate to - your thoughts can be so mean (laughter), like, not helpful at times, right?

BURNS: Absolutely. And I think I definitely struggled with that a lot growing up and, up until recently, to be honest. Sometimes I feel detached from myself, like a bird's-eye view of myself, and that my thoughts are like a separate entity inside of me being really mean. And you're like, kind of butting heads with it. For the longest time, I just found my brain and my thoughts just being super unkind to me. And I get intrusive thoughts all the time. That's kind of why that lyric came to be.

RASCOE: So you've learned a lot about yourself. In April of last year when you were 23, you tweeted, I've just been diagnosed with ASD, autism spectrum disorder, and my whole life just makes sense. Like, what was it like to get that clarity?

BURNS: It meant everything. Being neurodivergent and only finding out later on, not as a child, you can very much invalidate your experience. And I think with something as specific as autism, until I got the diagnosis, I would just invalidate myself and was at a constant battle with myself, and then getting the actual diagnosis, allowed me to just breathe and go, oh, OK, this makes so much sense. My brain is just wired differently, and now I can put things in place to help myself, but I can give myself grace.

RASCOE: Like a lot of 20-somethings, you're on TikTok, and you use it to promote your music.

(SOUNDBITE OF TIKTOK)

BURNS: I am Black (imitates gunshot). I am a woman (imitates gunshot). I am gay (imitates gunshot). I'm neurodivergent (imitates gunshot). That's a quadruple homicide. Imagine seeing a quadruple homicider in the charts, Top Ten, this week.

RASCOE: Quadruple. And for those that don't know, one of your songs went viral on the app, which is a huge deal. Can you tell us about that moment?

BURNS: So I joined TikTok back in 2020, and I teased one of my songs called "Go."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GO")

BURNS: (Vocalizing).

And it got received really well. I released it in July or August of 2020. And it did OK at the time. Like, it got a few million streams. I was happy with that being the start of my career. And then the start of 2022, end of 2021, it just had a resurgence. Then it took on a life of its own and really sped up my career in terms of being a new artist and being seen as an artist.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GO")

BURNS: (Singing) Pack up your [expletive] and go.

RASCOE: You use your platform, both on TikTok and in your music, to kind of share your experiences as a Black, queer, neurodivergent woman. What has the reception been like to being so open about your identity?

BURNS: Response has been really great, and people have been really accepting. And I think because I hit quite a few boxes, people from different groups see a bit of themselves in me and they see kind of hope and inspiration in what it is I'm trying to do. I feel lucky that I've been received so well and definitely don't take it for granted. In the U.K., it's just not common.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PEOPLE PLEASER")

BURNS: (Singing) But listen, when I see you cry, I can't stand what I feel inside...

RASCOE: You have a song on the album - it's called "people pleaser."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PEOPLE PLEASER")

BURNS: (Singing) Guess I'm what they call a people, people, people pleaser.

RASCOE: You're a recovering people pleaser. So what does that mean?

BURNS: I'm a recovering people pleaser is someone who can now put boundaries in place, learning how to stay firm in my no's. I understand being a people pleaser. I'm now, like, no, that's not a behavior that I want to carry on.

RASCOE: It feels like you've learned a lot for your early 20s. How do you expect your mid 20s to treat you?

BURNS: I'm excited. Through sort of therapy and reading and just doing the work on myself, I feel much more centered, and I'm excited to see musically what I have to say about those experiences that I'll have in my life. And I feel safe within myself to know that I can get through everything.

RASCOE: That's Cat Burns. Her debut album, "early twenties," is out now. Thank you for being with us.

BURNS: Thank you so much for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PEOPLE PLEASER")

BURNS: (Singing) Guess I'm what they call a people, people, people pleaser.