Many students know what they want to do after high school, whether it’s knowing what they want to study at college, taking a gap year or following their own path. Vandegrift graduate Erin Osborn knew she wanted to carry on her passion for singing by releasing her own songs. 

“I always wanted to release something,” Osborn said. “I just kinda looked into it for a while and researched, and I was waiting to release until after high school, just in case my mom didn’t want me to release anything.”

Osborn has been singing for six years now, but didn’t start taking music seriously  until she was twelve. 

“Before that for some reason, I was really bad at singing,” Osborn said. “Then suddenly, puberty happened, and then I just kinda started writing poems. I liked poetry and stuff, and so I started doing that and trying to sing and I gradually got better.”

Osborn writes her songs to navigate her feelings. Osborn mentioned that in her first ever song she’s ever released called, “Trust in You”, she talks about getting her heart broken. 

“My friend basically took the guy that I liked and broke all the friend rules, and I guess I was just kinda depressed for a while,” Osborn said. “Then suddenly, I was just praying and being like ‘can you help take this away?’ like ‘take this pain away,’ and suddenly like that, it’s just gone.”

For her first song, “Trust in You” Osborn had a producer who she met at her church and wanted to work with her on one of her songs after hearing her sing. After working with him on that song though, she lost contact with him, and started producing her songs herself.

“I don’t remember why he asked me to sing, but I did, and after he was like ‘do you want me to produce something for you?’ and I showed him that song and he was like, ‘yeah this is going to be a great song,” Osborn said. “I just recently released it.”

The second song that she released, called “Falling”, was the first song that she produced by herself. Osborn said that her inspiration came from when she was flying on an airplane.

“I actually wrote it on an airplane,” Osborn said. “That one was kinda of a combo of different free royalty loops and I just kinda pasted it all together.”

Being that she doesn’t have a producer and  is producing her own music, Osborn said that it usually takes her 18 hours to produce her music. 

“The ‘Trust in Me’ one, I only sang, so it took like a couple of hours or something and then I came up with the chorus on the piano and I had a producer, so it didn’t take long,” Osborn said. “The ones I’m doing myself, ‘Falling’ and ‘Walk with Me’, Falling didn’t take long, but the ‘Walk with Me’ one, took a while to mix it and I’m still a little eh on it.”

Osborn says that she never expected to be able to release music so quickly after graduation. She is planning on releasing two songs called ‘Happier than Ever’ and ‘Nightmares and Daydreams’ later this year.

“I didn’t think I was able to do it that quick,” Osborn said. “I thought it was going to be several months. It feels kinda surreal as well, as I never thought I would release anything.”

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1TYRbDH3Z3v24CoOs3sGnc?si=ADQDNRCNQyOIL8Tth48Blw

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erin_nicole00/