“My parents gave me their record collection when I was 15. It had loads of classic albums—Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Blondie, The Rolling Stones etc. That’s when I found Rumours by Fleetwood Mac.That album changed my world.”
“It rotated my entire identity off axis and aligned me in a new reality. Stevie was the sun, the moon, the stars: she was everything. I would move the needle back to the beginning of “Dreams” over and over again. I just wondered how anyone could sing like that. Like she was inside of my room, telling me how she felt with no pretense. That record pointed me to Tusk and their self titled. I like to think that Stevie is woven into the fabric of my voice.
I always knew I’d make music. Even as a little girl, there wasn’t much else that I would even entertain. I didn’t do sports. I dramatically quit swimming during the try outs, demonstrating a lack of awareness as to what trying-out actually meant. I thought Girl Scouts was a waste of time and convinced one of my friends to sell my cookies for me. I felt like this weird adult, trapped in a kid body and expected to do kid things. But when I found Rumours, it finally clicked. I was meant to sing songs the way that Stevie sang “it’s only me who wants to wrap around your dreams and have you any dreams you’d like to sell?”
I still have most of the records that my parents gave me and used it as a foundation to build my own. That dusty faded copy of Elton John’s Madman Across the Water now shares its cubicle with Death Cab and Bikini Kill. It’s pretty amazing how vinyl can age. It shows its years like rings on a tree. I recently got a copy of Kacey Musgrave’s Same Trailer, Different Park. One of my favorite albums of the last decade. But I can hear it’s newness. It feels so different than when I pull out Led Zeppelin II.
It’s my dream to have my upcoming album Recovery Songs released on vinyl even though everything is about streaming numbers these days. The world is changing so fast that we might watch streaming become irrelevant or Instagram go out of business. But they still sell vinyl at Urban Outfitters. We still have record stores in Silverlake. This medium manages to outlive us all, while most other recorded mediums become outdated relics of the past. I love the idea that my vinyl collection will be there when I’m not. That my records will be the evidence of who I was.”
—Kat Hamilton
“Medicine Line,” the new single from Kat Hamilton is in stores now.
