Simple, Sweet, and Smiling

Dreamy synths and complex harmony vocals abound on the third studio album from singer-songwriter Kacy Hill. Building on the electronic-tinged indie pop of its predecessor (2020’s wonderfully titled *Is It Selfish If We Talk About Me Again*), the LP is more expansive sonically (aided by coproducers Jim-E Stack, John Carroll Kirby, and Ariel Rechtshaid) and lyrically, with Hill digging into particularly vulnerable subjects on songs like “Another You” and the title track. “In so many ways, I just make music for myself, and it’s music that I want to hear,” Hill tells Apple Music. “In reflecting afterwards, I guess the biggest thing I hope for is that it connects with someone, and that someone else feels heard and understood. I think that the most rewarding thing for me is just being like, ‘Oh yeah, other people feel this way, and I’m not the only person, like, stuck in my head.’” Below, Hill digs into several key tracks on *Simple, Sweet, and Smiling*. **“I Couldn’t Wait”** “That was the first one that I started for this album. I’d been in a funk for a good few months at the beginning of quarantine, I think, partially because I was still in the process of putting out another album. I got back into a flow and Eli Teplin sent me this little piano idea, which are the keys that are in the song still. Then I wrote the song over that piano idea, and then just looped it, and that was the song. I wrote this whole album, that song included, just in my room. It was a lot of virtual writing, sending stuff back and forth. That was just the start of a new creative process for me.” **“Seasons Bloom”** “I started that one with John Carroll Kirby and Jim-E Stack. We got together and put together this really rough idea. Then I took it home and just deconstructed it, made it something different, and in this really, really rough demo vocal take, I said the words ‘seasons bloom’ and John was like, ‘Oh, that’s a cool thing.’ I like the idea of feeling like there’s this moment of refuge or calm in the storm, and in whatever I’m feeling. Just in being with someone that I love and feeling like that makes it all worth it, you know?” **“Simple, Sweet, and Smiling”** “For the longest time, it was called ‘10/10,’ because we made it on October 10 and that was just the file name. But I decided to call the album *Simple, Sweet, and Smiling* because there’s a line in the first chorus that says, ‘I would like to be simple, sweet, and smiling.’ It felt really representative of the mood of making the album, or really just how I felt over the past year, because it felt like, COVID aside, there was just a lot of heaviness in me. My dad had gotten sick, so it was dealing with that and the idea of facing his mortality, which is something I never really thought of before and didn’t feel like I had to face until I was much older. I just felt like I wasn’t the best partner or friend in a lot of ways, because I had all this heaviness, and I think it was just this aspirational idea to want to be simple, sweet, and smiling—to just want to be easy and simple and light.” **“Easy Going”** “That one was actually the only one that I made in person, in a session, and I made it with Ethan Gruska and Jim-E Stack. We were just jamming and came up with this little idea, and then I put vocals down and that ended up being the melody. Lyrically, it’s about, obviously, going through anxiety, but I think I’ve had multiple moments of frustration where I’m like, ‘Why don’t I feel better?’ I’m doing all the things I’m supposed to be doing. I exercise. I drink water. I eat healthy. I’m on medication. I’m journaling. When is it supposed to kick in?” **“The Right Time”** “It was one of those songs that I went back and forth on the lyrics a million times. But it finally settled in, this feeling of almost like, ‘right person, wrong time,’ where you feel like you’re always missing each other. Even in a relationship, one person always wants the other person more, at different times. It’s just back and forth, of not wanting to be too needy, but at the same time being like, ‘But I do need you to at least tell me that you love me and miss me.’” **“Another You”** “That one was the last one added. It was called ‘Snatch,’ because I do weightlifting, and \[my demos\] all have the dumbest names. It sounded really different, but I liked the melody on it a lot. So, we just took everything away, took all the music away, and John really masterminded the production on that because I was just like, ‘I don’t quite know what to do with this.’ Honestly, the lyrics are almost too vulnerable for me. It feels like I’m naked, standing, I don’t know, at the school talent show or something.”

The Los Angeles singer-songwriter’s charming third album is full of recurring worries, but her nods to ’80s synth pop and adult contemporary imbue the music with a sense of lightness.

Creative and gifted Kacy Hill does a wonderful job updating the sounds of 1980s synthpop and soul on her new album, 'Simple, Sweet, and Smiling'.