Interview with Sydney Sierota of Echosmith

Posted on October 21, 2022
by Aimee

I have been lucky to see and photograph the band Echosmith several times in the past. It’s always a super fun time and they return to Denver on November 8th at our Marquis Theater. I am pretty sure the floor up to the beams will be shaking all night during that show. Recently, I was able to get on a zoom call with Sydney Sierota, the lead singer of Echosmith – who are actually a band of three siblings. She was (unsurprisingly) very nice and we chatted about what they have been up to, as well as all the new music they’ve been working on.

Concert photos by me. Header photo by Nightdove Studio.

Echosmith Interview

Aimee:
First, can you just give me a quick synopsis, for people who don’t know, a little history of your band. I know you’ve been around for about 10 years.

Sydney:
Yeah. A little synopsis is always helpful. Echosmith is a family band of siblings. We actually started the band when I was nine, so that was 16 years ago. If I can do math. What year are we in? 2022? Okay. I don’t even know.

Aimee:
Right? Who knows anymore.

Sydney:
We have obviously gone through a lot of changes over the years. We wrote and recorded our debut album, Talking Dreams, that had “Cool Kids” and “Bright” on there, when I was about 14 or 15 and that’s when we really started professionally. Yeah. So we’ve been touring full time, basically since I was 16. Our first tour was Warped Tour, so we were really thrown into the game ’cause that is one of the craziest, most fun tours you could ever be on. We did it two years in a row, which is totally wild.

We’ve had a lot of fun making music as a family. Now we’re putting out new music, heading back on tour now. We’re in this really sweet phase of life, in our career, of just having creative freedom and really embracing that and enjoying it. We’re making music in such a different and special way now, that we’re really excited about. We’re just laying ourselves bare for our fans to see, because at the end of the day, if I’ve gone through something, someone else is bound to go through it too. We make it one of our goals for people to feel seen through our lyrics. OK. That’s a little synopsis on us. I skipped over, probably a lot.

Aimee:
No, no, no. It’s a lot to pack in there. I know you just released a reimagined version of “Cool Kids.” What made you decide to do that?

Sydney:
“Cool Kids” started to come back this summer, thanks to TikTok actually. Of course, then it meant that our streams, Instagram, and all the other platforms were reflecting that comeback as well, which, as a band you’re excited about. You love getting to see people connect to your music. And of course, seeing people connect to it nine years after it came out is super special, because you can only hope for that as a band. As one of the songwriters of the song, it’s very comforting for me to see, hey, I’m not the only one who feels this way and still struggles with this. So, that was also really great personally, too.

But, because of that comeback of the song, the resurgence, it made us take a step back and look at the song as a whole and ask ourselves, what if the song isn’t finished yet? There was always this instrumental bridge section, that in the live setting, I would actually extend that. That would be my moment to bring myself into the story and tell the audience why I relate to the song, why the song was written and how I feel very insecure sometimes. I’ve always been very insecure. I share that with the crowd, in that moment and bring them into that. Then, we all sing it together afterwards.

So, it was really cool to get in the studio and just go into it with open minds and not have any expectations. To write that new bridge, felt very full circle and powerful for us, because that’s the first time in a recorded sense, I was able to bring myself into the story. Yes, I’ve had a lot of growth, but it’s okay that I’m still on my journey to becoming more comfortable in my own skin. So, that’s why we put that out, which is really exciting.

Aimee:
You have two new singles, “Hang Around” and “Gelato.” I would be remiss not to mention the “fresh like Boulder, Colorado” lyric. So just tell me a little bit about those singles and where they came from and all that.

Sydney:
Yeah. “Hang Around” was actually the first song we put out for this whole new chapter of Echosmith, which felt very fitting because it was the first song that determined a new sound for this new chapter. That song was actually started in the car in a way, because we all live in different places now. We passed things around digitally one day while I was headed up to L.A. Then we went and finished it in just a couple hours, which is not always the case. Sometimes we’re working on a song for days, if not months, reworking it. But this song came out very naturally. It’s where it finally felt like it clicked for us.

“Gelato” was written when we actually did a little writing camp up in Idaho, with some songwriters. We wrote all sorts of songs. I mean, there were a lot of slow songs and there were a lot of upbeat songs and things in between. We wrote probably, I don’t know, 15 songs in a couple days. “Gelato” came from that.

That was a song that we did spend a couple months reworking because we wrote that chorus up in Idaho, and then we just kept reworking the verses because we wanted to have a song that was really fun and upbeat, but also still have depth there. It’s always important for us to feel like we deeply connect to a song, even if it’s a simple love song.

Anyways, we finished that song a couple months ago and really loved the idea of addressing the fact that life can be really hard and really heavy. But also acknowledging that sometimes you need to make the conscious choice to let that go for a moment and put it aside, even just for one hour even, if you can, to make it so you can actually be present and be here and now. Because I think so many of us have so many stresses in our lives and things that cause anxiety and worries, for both today and tomorrow and yesterday, that we need to be intentional about letting that go for a moment, so that we can actually be here and now. That’s what the song is about. Life can be hard, but it also can be beautiful. Sometimes you need to make the conscious choice to embrace that.

Aimee:
I love that. Well, and along those lines, I wanted to mention that as Lonely Generation came out during COVID lockdown, I listened to that album so much during that time. Particularly, “Love You Better” is probably not just favorite song on the album, certainly my favorite song of yours and one of my favorite songs ever. But I mean for me, that album was like that, where it was a rough year, but it was just such a mood-lifting album as a whole, in terms of the feeling of it. So, thank you for that.

Sydney:
No way. That’s awesome. Oh my gosh. Thank you for sharing.

Aimee:
We didn’t talk about the Boulder, Colorado in your lyric. Do you have any other memories of being in Colorado?

Sydney:
Yeah. I mean, I love Colorado and that’s actually a place that… I was literally talking to my husband yesterday. I’m like, if we lived in some other state, where would we live? Colorado is one of those places that just popped into my mind ’cause it’s so beautiful.

We thought that was a really fun lyric because there is something really fresh about Colorado. Even just when we play in Denver, yes, I’m a little bit more out of breath because of the elevation. That is real. But also, the air is really crisp and I don’t know, it feels like a breath of fresh air being there.

This tour is definitely one that we’ve put a lot of thought into. So, we’re really excited to show it to our fans and just use it as a vehicle to connect with everybody, ultimately. And hopefully let them walk out of that venue feeling more excited about life than they did walking in, and make it a really great experience for everyone.

Aimee:
That’s great. What are your plans for 2023?

Sydney:
Yeah. I mean, new music and tour are the huge things. We talked about that. But, it’s certainly a goal of ours to have a full length come out in 2023. We just want to keep releasing music. I love what we’ve been doing lately, which is just releasing lots of music and not taking a lot of time in between. We don’t want to overthink the process and the timing. We want our fans to hear where we’re at right now. I think that’s a really cool place to be in, creatively. We’re excited to just keep the ball rolling, ’cause it’s felt really awesome this year. I think next year will be a good one to keep it up.