Inside Macy Todd’s Modern Americana
Macy Todd’s new EP, pretty ruthless, is out now. Across six tracks, the singer-songwriter fuses traditional storytelling with pop-inflected melodies, asserting her place in 21st-century Americana.
Photo credit: Sophia Matinazad.
Macy Todd is a girl with soul. Her voice, with its captivating, raw tone is infused with a spirit that reminds you she is alive, and you are too. On her new EP pretty ruthless, the Georgia-born singer-songwriter explores the past decade of her life, cutting through misty nostalgia with her lucid lyrics and impassioned vocals. For 19 minutes, Macy candidly traverses what it means to return to what you knew all along.
Like many great artists, Macy grew up singing in her church choir in Georgia. At 14, upon hearing Brandi Carlile’s The Story for the first time, she instantly knew that she wanted to be able to communicate with her voice in the same emotional, evocative style that Brandi does. She told her dad she wanted to learn guitar, and he knew someone in the church who could teach her. Perhaps it was foresight, or the presentiment of innate talent, but Chris, her new teacher, didn't waste time getting to work. “We immediately got into the weeds of songwriting,” Macy explains, crediting Chris with teaching her how to structure and build a song. Led by a teacher with a profound respect for classic rock and classical music, and raised by a father enamored with gospel and funk, the aspiring guitarist developed a sonic foundation built upon intimate encounters with rhythm, melody, and expression. She delivers her talents on the 6 track EP.
Mean!, the project’s opener, reflects the songwriter’s continued affinity and respect for pop music. With a driving beat, she asserts her right to be, well, mean. When time isn’t kind to a girl like her, what choice does she have? “In writing this EP,” she explains, “I was reflecting on my twenties and what it means to be a woman in music. It brought up some anger that I wanted to express.” As mean! expresses this careful contemplation, vindication and trivialness are absent; rather, over a catchy hook, Macy is honest about her desire to assert herself.
Someone to you, the fourth track on the project, captures Macy’s knack for storytelling and her Americana influence. But where a songstress from a bygone era might profess her undying, unyielding love, Macy’s writing isn’t weighed down by lachrymose sentimentality. “I was someone, before I was someone to you,” she sings as her voice crescendoes with a sense of self-assuredness, twinged with the pain of a past lover taking her for granted.
Macy closes with love of my life, an instant contender for entry into Americana canon, with haunting vocals, leaving the listener hungry for just a few more minutes of her soulful sound. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she sings, making your heart ache for that person you shouldn’t, and a vulnerable quiver in her voicecracks remind you that you aren’t the first person to feel despair, and certainly won’t be the last.
Her musical practice found its perfect counterpart years ago when she met her current producer, Jon Joseph. Though the two lived in California at the same time and shared mutual friends, their paths didn’t cross until Macy moved away. Now, they fly cross-country to see one another and focus on a creative session—the holiest of ceremonies for musicians and their collaborators—for days at a time. Together, the pair has created dozens of tracks, many of which will remain in the vault. In the trust that Macy has found with her collaborator, she has also found space to be honest and develop her ability to communicate via songwriting.
The creative bond between Macy and Jon is to thank for the truthfulness that underpins her music; between them, there’s an unspoken agreement that the creative choices need not be justified. Part of that, she credits to their similar upbringings. Unsurprisingly, Jon also was raised in the musical world of church. “There’s a soulful aspect that comes from it,” she says. “I have felt closer to God just through the act of singing.”
Pretty ruthless arrives as the first project put forth by Macy with Atlantic Outpost, a label focused on the Americana singer-songwriter. With storytelling reminiscent of Patsy Cline’s emotional timelessness and Sheryl Crow’s alt-country sensibility, she is at home with Outpost, where she joins a roster that includes Johnny Blue Skies, The War & Treaty, and her friend, Willow Avalon.
While some artists might jump to be signed to a major label, Macy admits she was cautious of the loss of creative freedom that comes at the price of representation. Paramount to all was her ability to keep working with her producer. “He’s the other half of my brain,” she says. Luckily, at Outpost, Macy held on to her creative liberty. Pretty ruthless is a project in which she simultaneously returns to the musical roots that have remained through her artistic trajectory and looks back upon the instability and changes that accompany one's twenties. Though plainspoken lyricism and warm voice are undoubtedly of the Americana tradition, Macy toes the line between folk roots and the pop realm, as she navigates between uptempo and pared back tracks. She favors simple writing over formulaic prose and structure, capturing the likes of Patty Griffin, while evolving the broken-hearted, down-on-her-luck lyricism of generations past.
Bolstered by a Southern, soulful current running through every track, Macy delivers a reflective and honeyed EP that, as so many great women of songwriting have done before her, proves the enduring power of honest storytelling.
pretty ruthless is out now on all streaming platforms.