Jessie Baylin laid down tracks with producer Richard Swift, “It’s the truth of my life right now,” Baylin tells us about motherhood , she and her husband, Nathan Followill of Kings of Leon, I got pregnant through the process [of making the album], and it feels like divine timing. I don’t want [motherhood] to completely define me, because I felt like the message was more vast, but once I started writing these songs, it was, ‘oh this is exactly what needs to be happening for me. I can own all of this and get behind it completely.'”
What makes Strawberry Wind different is that it approaches children’s music in a way that trusts kids to be more mature than we give them credit for, and lets adults be more whimsical than usually permitted. Songs like “Supermoon,” with a visually vibrant video directed by Steven Mertens, is a taste of this unique, youthful dreamland and part of a five-song mini-film that will accompany the release. Baylin wrote the song about her love affair with all things lunar.
“I feel like over the past few years, the moon has hired a publicist,” she says. “I’ve never seen so many super moons and blood moons. I’ve always been a fan of the moon. It’s something that holds a lot of magic and mystery, and the song really wrote itself.”
Like Baylin’s 2015 LP Dark Place, which was written as a reaction to the uncharted and sometimes terrifying waters that come with the birth of a child, Strawberry Wind is deeply connected to motherhood, and to the promises and puzzles presented to parents as they navigate raising the next generation.
“The timing of this feels incredibly important,” Baylin says. “Lord knows we could all use some joy and wonder right now.”
