Artist Spotlight - Kristina Murray

Kristina Murray’s Little Blue navigates heart (“You Got Me”) and home (“Watchin’ the World Pass Me By”) with effortless elegance (the title track). We recently talked with the Nashville-based singer-songwriter about her seamless new collection.

“My second record came out in September 2018,” Murray says. “I was still in the album cycle for that when the pandemic happened. I had some new songs at that point but also wrote a bunch of songs during that down time period.”

Describe how Little Blue took shape.

Kristina Murray: I was able to cull and pick the best tunes from those to create a somewhat thematic through line. So, I wouldn’t say these songs all were specifically written for this record, but I thought they made the most dynamic record. These nine songs rose to the top of the songs I hadn’t previously recorded or released.

An album with just nine songs gets straight to the point.

Nine songs and about thirty-four minutes is about as long as I wanna hear someone – much less myself. I can’t stand double records. All that says to me is that there hasn’t been any editing (laughs). I find listening to even my favorite artists for more than an hour difficult. Maybe that’s a product of the times. Everyone’s attention span is so much shorter now. You can do a lot with nine songs and half an hour. I agree: nine songs is perfect. Lots of artists I like are following that guidepost.

Yeah. Attention spans are totally gone.

Yeah. I think you should say what you’re gonna say with your project and then be done with it and move on to the next. I feel like these things come in cycles. Everything was singles in the beginning of recorded and commercially released music. Then it moved into the heyday of the album format in the sixties through the eighties when the album was an art piece in and of itself. I’m not crazy about this trend toward singles today, but that has mostly to do with computers and I’m not really a computer or a robot or AI kinda person. I want to make art. I don’t wanna make content.

Let’s title this Q&A “Fuck AI.”

Yes! Yes! (laughs)

This is a weird time with the push between singles and the vinyl resurgence.

Yeah, this is a really weird time. There’s no money to be made either way. Vinyl is so expensive on the front end, but it’s cool to have at the merch table. Obviously, streaming makes zero money, but you have to do both. I have friends who refuse to stream, but then their music isn’t getting out there. That’s the whole fucking point unless you’re an artist who just likes to release music into the world for your own personal satisfaction. I would call that person a hobbyist.

Or a trust fund baby.

Oh, lord. There are lots of those around (laughs).

Explain the title Little Blue.

Sure. The title track “Little Blue” ends the album. I went back and forth on the title because there’s a line (I liked as a title) in my song “Fool’s Gold” – “shine a little light.” Eight of the nine songs on the record are written from a place of personal desperation and depression or putting myself in the shoes of others to (illustrate) my own struggles with personal sadness and existentialism. I felt like when these nine tracks came together they weren’t like Elliott Smith sad, but we are talking high functioning depression. These songs were written through years of emotional turbulence. Most things I wrote were imbued with sadness.

Little Blue…

Yeah, I ultimately went with that title, but I do like the idea of Shine a Little Light because the songs retain an element of hope even though they’re about heavy things. Ultimately, it was more like, “Okay, I’m coming out of these depressive years and it feels good to put those chapters behind me.”

Tell the story behind writing the title track itself.

“Little Blue” is three verses with a refrain line. The song zeroes into my own personal depression in the first verse then zooms out into the larger piece in the second about how we’re on this little blue spinning rock in the middle of a big, black nothing. All these things we think are so important are small in comparison to the grander scheme.

What about the third verse?

The last verse in that song – and the last verse on the record – makes mention of the earth and our universe. I pulled that quote “little blue” from an ecologist named Sylvia Earle. She’s a pioneering woman in ecology and marine biology who said something to the effect of, “If everyone could just recognize how special it is that we’re even alive at all on this little blue spec in the universe we would have a lot better perspective on things.”

– Brian T. Atkinson