Today we’re thrilled to give you the premiere of Katie Boeck’s new track, “Bittersweet”. As a talented singer/songwriter and actor, Katie delivers her unique blend of angelic vocals and emotionally resonant lyrics. “Bittersweet” is the second single from her upcoming album, Calico, which is due to be released on April 28th.
Today, listeners have the opportunity to hear “Bittersweet” before its official release on March 3rd. Which you can get notified about here when it releases this Friday. So, let’s dive in and explore this new track.
“Bittersweet” is an introspective ballad that, as Katie puts it, explores the tension between longing for someone and the difficulty of letting them go. The song is a stunning showcase of Katie’s incredible vocals and her ability to imbue her music with a deep sense of emotion and authenticity.
“It took several rounds of working through different lyrics, titles and melodies to find something that matched the complexity of emotion evoked in the chord progression. I wanted to articulate the bittersweet tension between longing for someone and letting them go.”
One of the most striking elements of the song is the gentle, mellow sound that underpins Katie’s vocals. The track features light percussion and a delicate, harp-like piano sound that perfectly complements her seraphic singing style. The result is a heavenly sound that lingers in your head.
As a listener, it is easy to see why this is a song that will connect with a lot of people. The lyrics are poignant and heartfelt, exploring the pain and sadness of letting go of someone you love. However, there is also a sense of hope and possibility in the song that makes it both uplifting and inspiring.
Be sure to check out “Bittersweet,” on March 3rd when the song is released of digital platforms, and you can receive a notification here when it drops. “Calico,” the new album is set to be released on April 28th.
More From Katie Boeck
Katie Boeck’s voice is earthy and cosmic. Her muses, modern and ancient. Her power, higher and worldly. Boeck doesn’t just revel in these contradictions—she weaves them together on her forthcoming album, Calicodue April 28, 203.Calicocaptures the arc of maturing relationships—from naïveté and illusion to self-love and sovereignty.
It’s an album about modern love and the longing that still tugs beneath the promise of our hyper-connected culture. On the title track Boeck sings, “I’m in every direction / too many modes of connection.” And on the album’s opener, ‘Over Again’ she ponders time and the gift of owning your history. “Would you do it over again/ lose ourselves along the path of good intentions”.
These are songs about life taking unexpected courses and stories of love just out-of-reach.Boeck summons a pantheon of guides—wise women both mythic and real. Like Eve, Boeck likes to reimagine herself returning to Eden, whole. And Like Eurydice, Boeck followed one her musical guides, Joni Mitchell, out of the underworld. Recently divorced, newly single-parenting, Boeck was struggling to find her voice.
So she looked to Joni’s oracular songs to help renew her own creative spark. She learned Joni’s watershed record Bluein its entirety and toured the show for a year. Living inside Joni’s cadences and signature melismaled Boeck back to her own sonic soil. She used songwriting’s ancient alchemy to find wisdom in her heartache and spiritual injuries.
She also found kinship with co-producer Dustin Ransom (also recently divorced) who wound up co-writing and co-producing the album.Boeck’s career has been wildly varied. After graduating UCLA’s Theater program, she spent her early twenties playing every Westside LA dive bar and coffeehouse, living on Lookout Mountain and soaking in that Laurel Canyon sound.
She landed a spot in an all-women Bollywood band that took her on a surreal six-month “Eat, Pray, Love-esque” tour of India, playing everything from farm weddings to the Indian Navy’s annual gala. Afterwards, Boeck found herself back in LA with reverse culture shock, her old Chevy Caprice Classic and a heartbreak from a recent Spanish romance. She wove these experiences into the songs that appear on her debut album, Speaking of You.
Boeck then moved to New York to star in Duncan Sheik’s musical, Spring Awakening, where she shared the lead role of Wendla with deaf actress Sandra Mae Frank. The play’s success occasioned appearances on Late Night with Seth Meyers, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and a 2016 Tony nomination for Best Revival of a Musical. Boeck’s rendition of “Ave Maria”was featured on HBO’s critically-acclaimed television series “The Newsroom”and her cover of Ace of Base’s “The Sign”was recently featured on Netflix’s “Love Island”.
She has played Electric Forest Festival, Mile of Music, the Cutting Room, City Winery and Carnegie Hall. Boeck now lives in Nashville with her five-year-old son.
