If you’re looking for someone to cry with, throw a curveball, or land a split atom of a sad song while doing Walk the Dog with a pro-grade yo-yo, Faye Webster is your girl.
Fresh off Atlanta Millionaire’s Club, the album that made critics swoon and probably a few exes wince, Webster admits she had to recalibrate fast. “I had to learn my limit,” she says of her first headlining tour. “Not having to go to Germany when I was in a state where I should not be going to Germany—yeah, that definitely helped.” It’s the kind of wisdom you only get from attempting to sing breakup songs in a foreign country while completely wrecked from burnout.
The record is intimate, woozy, and emotionally brutal—but in a pretty way. “I think I just kind of had this realization that people are actually listening,” she says. “And I think it’s just a waste of an opportunity if I don’t actually, like, tell these people something.” Translation: she’s done with vague lyrics and onto torching her own romantic past in 2-minute increments.
Is it a relationship record? “Yeah, definitely a lot of songs are,” she concedes. But she resists the idea that it’s about one person. Even though, yes, there’s a song called “Johnny.” And yes, “Flowers” seems like a moment where she hands the mic to said Johnny, brought to life by Father, her Awful Records labelmate and collaborator. “I gave him complete freedom,” she says. “But I was on the front first, so he did play off that. It’d be dangerous otherwise.”
The standout track—at least according to your algorithm—is “Kingston.” Does she see it as her hit? “That song is so old to me,” she says, brushing it off with the kind of casual cool usually reserved for skaters and cats. “I’ve had that for over two years before it even came out as a single. I don’t even know which way to look at it anymore.”
And if you think the pedal steel that cries behind so many of these songs is a Nashville affectation, guess again. “I think it comes from the music I listened to growing up around my parents,” she says. “They’ve always been insanely supportive.” Unlike most of us, she never rebelled against her parents’ music. Then again, not all of us had parents cool enough to steer us toward the stylings instead of, say, Dave Matthews.
Atlanta itself is as much a character in the album as any ex. “I didn’t mean for it to be such a big thing in it,” she says. “But it is.” She compares moving away and coming back to opening a creative floodgate—one with regional flavor intact. In an era where streaming has scrubbed local character out of most pop, Webster’s album proudly smells like humid sidewalks and Waffle House.
Speaking of personal branding, while most musicians try to land a sneaker collab, Faye has a different flex: a signature yo-yo. “I didn’t want to just make a shitty plastic Walmart yo-yo,” she deadpans. “I wanted to make something that people will use and hopefully put them on to this game.” The company let her design the first version of a plastic yo-yo that mimics the feel of a metal one. Yes, it’s very legit. Yes, she’s good at it.
Could she go pro? “There are people that are so good and they still don’t make that much money,” she shrugs. “But that would be sick.” Until then, she’ll have to settle for being one of the most emotionally resonant singer-songwriters of her generation. And a damn good yo-yoist.
Listen to the interview above and check out the videos below!
