At the end of 2023, queer singer-songwriter Gatlin didn’t know if she’d ever make another album again. Disillusioned with the way her career was going, she entered therapy to work through her desire to quit. And as she dug deeper, she found herself becoming estranged from her family. It’s that combination that fueled her first album, The Eldest Daughter.
“I think all my music prior was a lot of breakup music or about relationships,” she tells me over Zoom. She was ready for something else. But as she tried to grow as an artist, matching her previous success felt elusive. Constant disappointment forced her to reevaluate everything.
And isn’t it always when you think you’re done with something that it comes back with a vengeance?
With distance from both her career and her family, she allowed herself to create music that was “brutally honest.” And the more she dug into creating, the more she realized how much she loved making music “no matter what it looks like.” She also knew she couldn’t keep the songs she was writing to herself — she had to release them into the world.
The Eldest Daughter is a deeply personal album that can only be described as cathartic. Over the course of 10 tracks, Gatlin lays bare the journey of self-discovery she’s been on. “I was looking at a lot of things that were coming up; behaviors or patterns that I had,” she says of the album’s theme.
The album’s title is a reflection on the singer’s place in her family. Learning more about herself made her realize that her role as the eldest daughter affected every single aspect of her life, including her music.
On the album’s first track “Florida Man,” she sings: “A black sheep is still black even if you paint it white — Just because you gave me life don’t mean you can regulate mine. I truly didn’t mean to dirty up your picket fence; I went somewhere I won’t offend, and I’ve never looked back again.”
While she doesn’t explicitly state it in the song, it’s clear that one of the things that makes Gatlin the “black sheep” is the fact that she’s queer. This song and others on the album (like “Jesus Christ & Country Clubs”) highlight her disinterest in fitting into the norms set out for her by her family and the version of the world they live in.
“It’s hard having parents who have different political beliefs than you,” she says.
Gatlin describes coming to terms with her queerness as a “catalyst” for “why things shifted” in her life. “I could have very easily just not questioned anything and lived in ignorance, and been exactly who my parents wanted me to be,” she says.
However, she believes that being queer sped up the process of questioning everything she’d been taught in life. Those questions are at the heart of the album.
On the album’s second track, “If She Was A Boy,” Gatlin most directly addresses her queerness and how it has pushed her along on her journey. Its genesis came from a 2018 journal entry she found, which was the first time she ever allowed herself to admit she had feelings for a girl.
The song, which was also the album’s first single, really seems to be making an impact on listeners. She wrote it from the perspective of her 19-year-old self, who was still very much trying to figure everything out. And now, she is being praised by kids just like she was.
Many of the song’s most ardent fans are those who are currently “figuring out their sexuality.” It means a lot to her that the lyrics have become a “place of comfort or help,” because that’s what she was seeking when she first wrote that journal entry. But she also enjoys knowing that people who may be farther along in their queerness journey can also hear the song and think back to when they were also going through those feelings.
One of the things that struck me when listening to the album is how unafraid Gatlin seems to be to go deep. This sentiment comes through most clearly on the album’s fourth track, “Soho House Valet.” The first time I listened to it, I was shocked by the level of pure, raw emotion that came through. And that was by design.
Gatlin explains she had written the song not even a week after a particularly wounding fight she had with her dad. She describes the verses as her “innermost fears and pains,” but then on the chorus, her eldest daughter syndrome kicks in, and she finds herself apologizing for being so honest. The whole song is a dance she does with the listener where she is brutally honest, but then self-realization kicks in and she feels compelled to almost take it back.
To her, the song feels like she has “trauma dumped like all over you.” But then she is left “feeling anxious” about doing it. She apologizes, but she isn’t finished, so buckle up. As the eldest daughter, “even if something’s really heavy, I’m always like, ‘you still have to fix everything or manage everyone else’s emotions’,” she says.
It’s the song’s rawness that was a catalyst for the rest of The Eldest Daughter. “I think I was filtering myself a lot to appease my family, not making the art I wanted to make because I didn’t want to upset anyone,” she explains.
But it doesn’t stop there. On the following track, “LOVE ME,” the singer admonishes her parent for not being able to accept her for who she is. “Maybe I don’t want your prayers,” she sings. “I just want you to love me.”
While she was writing, she realized it was time to let go of her need to box herself in and not rock the boat with her art. So she wrote from the heart. “Not in a way of wanting to hurt anyone or be mean to anyone,” she clarifies. “But this is my story and my truth, and I’m allowed to talk about it and write songs about it.”
Her ability to not shy away from the truth is the best part of The Eldest Daughter. Her lyrics are never accusatory. And they never come for someone without evidence to back it up. Gatlin’s willingness to open herself up and be vulnerable is a skill she had to learn. But it’s clear she’s not only learned it, but mastered it. Laying your heart on the line isn’t an easy experience, but she clearly knew the only way out of her feelings was to push through them.
I am certainly glad that she didn’t quit music. And so is she.
“It’s been very empowering,” Gatlin says of making the album. “And I think it’s made me feel less alone.”
The Eldest Daughter is out now.
