Written by: Oliver Heffron
While their carefree personality could fool you, Nashville-based singer/songwriter corook is a seriously talented musician. The nonbinary indie artist has risen quickly in the local scene with their style of delicate, whimsical melodies and quick-witted lyrics. Their most recent two-part project, serious person, sees corook present contrasting shades of thoughtful contemplation and intuitive expression in a charming journey of self-discovery.
serious person (part 1) highlights corook’s songwriting prowess with moments like the visceral glimpses of a first crush “natalie.” In contrast, serious person (part 2) exudes spontaneous, vibrant energy that matches its lyrics, which read like those insightful, funny thoughts that come out of nowhere: “I have a memory that’s really not my memory / I tell it at parties, so people will remember me / It’s messed up, I’m a faker / Can’t dissect it, it’s pretty layered / Just like my haircut / That’s underneath my haircut” (from “haircut”).
The project proves corook to be a dynamic, distinct songwriter in the Nashville scene. It’s even made an impact beyond music, as the hit single “if i were a fish (ft. olivia barton)” from (part one) is currently being adapted into corook’s debut picture book.
Catching up with Nuance after a recent show in Nashville at The Blue Room to kickstart their tour, corook shares how it felt to headline for the first time in their adopted hometown:
“It was just really special to be in a room with my community and fans, which is what I kind of have been working towards and it’s just a lot of fun…Just like coming home and seeing family faces and being welcomed, like that was awesome.”
Photo Credit: Libby Danforth
Growing up in the South Hills area outside of Pittsburg, PA, corook, aka Corrine Savage, first gravitated towards music after their dad showed them a Link Park tour documentary:
“Immediately, I was just like, ‘I’m going to do that.’ I started to take notes about the notepad and a pen, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna play guitar and I’m gonna sing, and then I have this friend and they’ll play the drums, and I have this other friend and they’ll play bass or whatever…I just immediately started dreaming about it, and it kind of just never really died.”
After graduating from The Berklee College of Music, corook was faced with the same decision most aspiring musicians confront: move to Los Angeles, New York, or Nashville. Being from the East Coast, they first moved to New York, only spending a few months before realizing they needed more of a sense of community: “I had always felt like Nashville had a little bit more of a community-based music scene and I really wanted to be a part of that. So that’s what I ended up doing, and I’m really glad that I did.”
After recording the single “serious person,” a slow-building mix of muted piano chords and lyrics that struggle not to make a joke in the face of an emotional situation, corook realized they had the vision for their next project: “It just felt like a really easy way to capture what I’ve been trying to do as corook which is like, take these really serious subjects and kind of make fun of them a little bit and make fun of myself, and like make light of everything because I feel like that’s just kind of how I deal with life.”
Thinking back on serious person (part 1), corook shares that they wrote songs like “serious person” and “natalie” to demonstrate the serious skill underlying their lighthearted persona: “I kind of wanted to prove myself as a songwriter. I wanted to show people like yes, I’m silly online and yes, I have this. You know, out there quirky personality, colorful clothing, but like I’m a really serious artist, and you should listen.”
Discussing what differentiates their most recent release, serious person (part 2), corook describes how they approached similar themes with a more open approach: “(part 2) was like, I’m going to take these topics and I’m going to run with them the way that I would as corook and kind of exaggerate it and have fun with it. I’ve been describing it as the wacky second sibling to (part one).”
Working with close friend Dan Fernandez to produce the entire (part two) EP, the two’s chemistry led to more freedom and experimentation in the studio. Corook discusses how this approach led them to appreciate a more imperfect yet colorful way to record:
“We just experimented a lot with how to get a recording. Getting a close mic recording is something really standard and really easy. But then putting mics on the other side of the room to catch all of the little reverberations that happen off the walls...I fell in love with what that did to the vocals or to the drums or to whatever we were recording. And it just brought everything to life a little bit more. It did so much sound like plugging into a DI and it being like, ‘this is the sound.’ It felt like this is the song and it is alive and it’s in this room, and now you get to hear it.”
For the touching opener “alien,” corook explains how a series of songwriting sessions with their friend Ben Abraham resulted in an unconventional approach as they tried to balance the song’s intimate lyrics with an extraterrestrial theme: “We ended up using paint brushes to play all of the acoustic guitars which I think gave it a really like spatial feeling like very spacey and very textured with that really intimate vocal on top. And then I got to play a lot with what an alien world would sound like with all of the atmosphere stuff going on with it. So it was really fun, but it also just like the whole process meant a lot to me and just as a way to kind of close that song out.”
Photo Credit: Libby Danforth
Reflecting on their performance at the most recent Nashville Pride Festival, corook shares how being a part of something that brings people together is a special experience:
“I think that like living in Nashville as a non binary person and as a queer person, we all have had to find our queer community, but it’s so special whenever we all get to come together for something like that. I love seeing all the gays and all baes coming to the show and I got to meet a lot of them after that. I really just hope it brings people to each other. I love that I get to relate to this really big, beautiful community of people that I really just I really hope they find each other through that.”
corook is looking forward to the rest of their tour, especially for a series of shows in the Pacific Northwest and an opening run for the Bombay Bicycle Club in Europe. While it’s still hard for them to fathom how they have fans in the UK, corook is poised to be the next voice out of Nashville to make an impact far beyond Music City’s reach.