Leah Mason Modified Her Identify and Her Music (Unique)

The drastic evolution of Leah Mason could appear considerably jarring to some — however to not her.

“After I first began making music, I did not even know who I used to be but,” Mason, 25, tells PEOPLE in a latest interview. “I imply, I used to be 18. I used to be too younger to choose one thing and keep it up for the remainder of my life. It is simply not real looking.”

Not too way back, the North Carolina native burst in another country music gate as Leah Marie Mason, trying like so many artists earlier than her, with the lengthy blonde hair and the candy smile frolicking in a subject of flowers. However that persona started to line up with the girl she was changing into.

“My private fashion was very completely different from what I used to be portraying as an artist,” says Mason, who released her debut EP Honeydew & Hennessy again in April of 2023 following the viral success of her first single “Far Boy.” “I do not assume I am the one artist that is ever completed that. However you additionally need your branding to be cohesive. So at the same time as I used to be altering and rising and leaning into completely different kinds, my branding wasn’t altering.”

However ultimately, Mason discovered her private {and professional} footing. And in doing so, she discovered her pop edge. “I nonetheless love lyrics and I nonetheless love visible phrases, and that’s nonetheless my bread and butter,” she says. “And I really feel like that sticks with the brand new music I am making, simply in an clearly completely different means.”

On Mason’s debut album HEXED, a considerably darker facet of the candy woman is revealed, a lot to the delight of her loyal fandom who appears to devour absolutely anything she places out.

“There was a time once I simply hadn’t been uncovered to all the potentialities for my music,” Mason explains. “I knew what was in entrance of me, and so I used to be utilizing what I might with the paints that I had and the paintbrushes that have been obtainable to me. After which as soon as I met my producer, an entire new palette, was proper in entrance of me.”

That producer was Simon Jonasson.

“I felt very free in the way in which I used to be making music with him that I hadn’t felt earlier than,” says Mason of the Sweden-based producer that she met throughout a pop music camp in Nashville. “I did not even know that I might do it genuinely. I simply did not even understand it was potential.”

The sonic shift created by the 2 resulted within the track “Spirits,” which Mason says, “modified her world” — a lot in order that she determined to “take an enormous threat” and fly to Sweden to make extra music with Jonasson.

“I did not even go anticipating to make an album, however that’s precisely what we did,” Mason says. “That clearly spoke volumes at how we work collectively, however it was a loopy shift.”

What didn’t shift was the power and brevity of the lyrics that Mason has lengthy been recognized for. “I really feel like I am blessed to have the data of writing music in the way in which they’ve all the time completed it in Nashville, however now I’m additionally stylistically doing what I wish to do,” Mason says. “I really feel like I can have my cake and eat it too. I like writing and I do not really feel like I ought to have to offer that up simply because I am doing a brand new style of music.”

Nonetheless, the gorgeous means wherein Mason finds a strategy to put the sheerest of vulnerability in her songs nonetheless shines on songs comparable to “Every little thing’s Gonna Be Alright.”

“I cried in a grocery retailer — and that’s how the track got here to be,” Mason says of the track she wrote alongside Jonasson and Sara Bares. “I’ve all the time had horrible anxiousness and panic assaults my complete life. It all the time appears to return to the floor at a time that you simply actually don’t desire it to, and usually in a public setting. And that is what occurred to me. So, I used to be like, we’ve to put in writing a track about this.”

Love additionally sneaks its means into HEXED, not shocking contemplating Mason is presently celebrating 5 years collectively together with her boyfriend. He even impressed observe 5 on HEXED referred to as “Insomnia.”

“I even have had insomnia my complete life,” Mason says of the situation serving as unique spine of the track she wrote alongside Bares, Jonasson and Oliver Frid. “However once we began dwelling collectively, I had by no means had such deep REM sleep in my life as I did alongside of him. I really feel very secure once we’re collectively. He is positively my Xanax in human kind.”