Lena Stone is back with a new pop gem and we can’t get enough of it!
The song, titled “Wrong Place,” allows the Nashville-based artist to be extremely vulnerable and look back on certain aspects of a relationship that she may have not noticed before. The soft beats and synths in the song compliment Stone’s gentle and almost-confessional vocals, making the song sound like a journal entry with its genuine and honest songwriting.
“When you’re in that kind of beginning of a relationship where you like, you want to open up to them, but you also want to keep, you know, your pride and your feelings to yourself a little bit and that tension that’s in there,” Stone shared exclusively with Celeb Secrets. “I wanted to write a song about that and it just kind of flowed out once we started writing and I’m so proud of how it turned out.”
“Wrong Place” comes right after the release of her single “Attention,” which was her first pop song since transitioning from being a country singer. It makes for a great follow-up with both songs aligning together and creating a perfect storyline – the true telling of a talented songwriter.
“They’re actually about the same relationship, just kind of two different moments in that same kind of early phase of a relationship,” Stone explains. “‘Attention’ is about like being so all in about somebody at the very beginning. ‘Wrong Place’ is that the kind of, other side of that coin where it’s like, “I’m so all in with you, but I’m not sure I’m ready to tell you that I’m all in with you.”
“We’ve been very intentional about the order of the songs,” she adds. “‘Attention’ is probably the most cross-over with a country feel — we had live drums on that and now we’re kind of breaking into the more true pop sound, which I’m so excited to share.”
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Regardless of the genre change, Stone is the perfect example of what great songwriting and storytelling as well as a strong vocal range, can lead to. Similar to artists like Taylor Swift, Bebe Rexha, and Maren Morris, making the crossover between genres is almost seamless for Stone.
“One of the things I love about where music is now is that genre matters so much less. So I decided to just say, these are pop songs. Let’s just let them be what they are and that’s okay,” Stone shares. “I think the best songs can be kind of produced however you want them to be and they’ll still shine.”
Read the rest of our interview with Lena Stone down below where she discusses her writing process for “Wrong Place,” what we can expect to hear from her later this year (spoiler: a full music project), and shares what her party-trick is.
Keep up with Lena and her music by following her on Instagram and Twitter, and check out her music on all music streaming platforms.
Celeb Secrets: You released your first pop single, “Attention,” earlier this year and you’ve been getting such great feedback. How has that been for you? Do you feel a sense of reassurance?
Lena Stone: “It has. It’s been so validating. Um, you know, I started this project at the beginning of the pandemic and so we kind of made it in a vacuum and I knew that I loved it and my producer, who I wrote all the songs with, he knew he loved it, but, and, and my, you know, my team loved it, but we didn’t really know what the reaction was going to be any, we were hopeful, but you never know until you put the music out and so to have so many people respond to it, so positively was like the best feeling in the world.”
CS: Talk to us about your new song, “Wrong Place.” How was that writing process? What inspired it?
LS: “So, “Wrong Place” was actually one of the first ones that we wrote for this project and it was a super, super, easy write. It was just me and my producer, Phil Barns, who I mentioned I wrote all the songs for the project with, and I’d had this idea for this song called “Wrong Place.” A couple years ago I was in this long-distance relationship and those are hard just to begin with, and even when you’re in the same city as somebody when you’re in that kind of beginning of a relationship where you like, you want to open up to them, but you also want to keep, you know, your pride and your feelings to yourself a little bit and that tension that’s in there…I wanted to write a song about that and it just kind of flowed out once we started writing and I’m so proud of how it turned out.”
CS: Listening to both “Attention” and “Wrong Place,” you can definitely hear a storyline there. Since storytelling is a big part of writing music, are those two songs connected at all?
LS: “They are definitely connected. They’re actually about the same relationship, just kind of two different moments in that same kind of early phase of a relationship. “Attention” is about like being so all in about somebody at the very beginning and then “Wrong Place” is that the kind of, other side of that coin where it’s like, “I’m so all in with you, but I’m not sure I’m ready to tell you that I’m all in with you.” So I think they definitely live in a similar world.”
CS: Would you say “Wrong Place” was easier or harder to write compared to “Attention?”
LS: “They actually both had very similar writing experiences. I think that as I’ve spent so many years writing songs just in my life, and then also writing songs here in Nashville, and I’ve learned that the songs that are easy are my favorites because you know if it’s easy to write it means that the ideas really flushed out and that I really know what I want to say sometimes. If it’s really hard for me to write a song, it’s because I don’t really know what I’m saying. But with both “Attention” and “Wrong Place,” they just kind of like pour it out in like an hour.”
CS: Did you have any co-writers for it?
LS: “So, this one was me and my producer, Phil, and he has been just a great collaborator through this project because a lot of my goal with writing this project has been, you know, just having my voice be so authentic and so he helped build this really beautiful track and kind of set the mood. From there, he just kind of let me experiment and he cheered me on and kind of, let me just tell my story in my own words and that’s so special to me, and that’s sometimes rare to find in a collaborator. He really kind of stepped back and let me do my thing, which was really amazing.”
CS: What three words would you use to describe “Wrong Place?”
LS: “That’s a great question! Vulnerable, vibe-y, I’ll try to think of something that doesn’t start with a ‘V.’ Let’s go with pop!”
CS: Can we expect to see a music video for “Wrong Place?”
LS: “We are definitely gonna do a video. It probably will not be a kind of a “traditional” music video. It’ll probably be a little more like a creative, kind of visualizer type of thing. We’re exploring some kind of fun ideas so it hasn’t been fully fleshed out yet, but yes, there will be a video to come with it.”
CS: Will you be releasing an EP or full album this year?
LS: “Yes, absolutely. These songs are part of a bigger project that I spent most of the last year working on and we’re still working, we’re still finishing it, but I can tell you, it is the most proud that I have ever been of music that I’ve made. So I can’t wait for everyone to hear all of it.”
CS: What kind of songs can your fans look forward to hearing? Different types of vibes or maybe different styles of storytelling?
LS: “Yeah, I mean, I think a big thing that’s important to me whenever I’m making a project, whether it be an EP or an album, is covering a bunch of different topics but also making sure that they live in the same world. So, that’s kind of my goal with this project as well so there’s going to be kind of a lot of different sounds in there and a lot of different stories, but there’s a lot of threads that connect them all together.”
CS: What inspired this album?
LS: “Well I think that I’ve had, like a lot of people, I’ve had a lot of time over the last year to think, cause we’ve been home so much and I’ve just been kind of thinking back about, you know the last few years of my life being in Nashville, being in my early twenties and the relationships that I’ve been in and the friendships that I’ve had, I kind of wanted to, I almost wanted to like go back and retrace my steps and look at some of those moments with a new lens, kind of now that I’m a little bit older and just kind of like re-envision what it was like then, and going through that with maybe a little bit more clarity.”
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CS: You’ve talked about your transition from country to pop with us before but, was there a specific moment that made you think “I have to switch music genres” or did it just catch you by surprise?
LS: “It was never really a surprise. I will say the music kind of led the transition. So, I wrote a couple of songs, that will be on the project that aren’t out yet, that I just fell in love with and they were pop songs. At first, I was like, well, if we change this about them or we put a mandolin on it, or we did this, we could kind of like force it into the country box. The more that I thought about that, the more inauthentic that sounded. One of the things I love about where music is now is that genre matters so much less. So I decided to just say, these are pop songs. Let’s just let them be what they are and that’s okay.”
CS: Yeah, definitely. I feel like everyone has a good story that has to be told whether or not it fits in a specific genre.
LS: “Exactly. Some of my favorite songs, I think could be produced in lots of different genres. I mean, if you think of the 1989 record by Taylor Swift, which is one of my top 10 of all time, Ryan Adams remade it as an alternative record with the same songs and it was also an incredible record. So, I think the best songs can be kind of produced however you want them to be and they’ll still shine.”
CS: Are there any secrets you can share with us about any upcoming projects you have? Or maybe something about you that you’ve never shared with anyone else?
LS: “I guess I have two. About the upcoming project, there’s a song that is going to come out later this year that is maybe my favorite song I’ve ever written, so I cannot tell you what it’s called, but I’m very excited. It’s going to come out probably late summer. Then a secret about me. I can rap every single lyric of the song “Money Maker” by Ludacris. It’s my fun fact, but the problem is whenever I tell people that, they then expect that I’m going to show them, but I promise that I can attest that that is true.”
