Even when you try to outrun it, the past has a way of slithering out of the shadows and coiling up over your shoulders. Gatlin Thornton had long since left behind the conservative, religious upbringing in the American south and was living her life on her own terms as a young queer woman—but then there it was, inescapable. In combing through old memories, Gatlin unlocked something in her creative process. She had been writing and releasing music since high school, but actually wading through time and re-experiencing all those strong feelings helped catalyze what would become her debut album as Gatlin, The Eldest Daughter (due October TK). The result is a set of songs about rejecting the path laid at your feet and needing to build your own way forward, a record that both embraces nostalgia and knows its inherent pain.
Gatlin spent her early years in Florida, fully entrenched in her conservative Christian private schooling—but her parents encouraged music as an outlet, where she excelled in guitar, piano, and singing. When it came time to start college, Gatlin had already begun bristling at the strictures of her upbringing and questioning how her burgeoning queer feelings would impact that life. She struck out to study songwriting, but after two years instead decided to drop out and work full-time in the heart of the music industry—first for a stint in Nashville, and then relocating to her current home in Los Angeles, while adding in frequent trips to London to collaborate with songwriters and producers.
It was while packing for one of her trips to London when the past first caught up with Gatlin via an old journal she’d stumbled upon. In one entry, she detailed her first realization that she was having feelings for a girl: “If she was a boy I’d be in love.” Gatlin had been amassing tracks full of clever lyricism and grand emotionality inspired by her new life, but that elegantly simple phrase brought a new depth and intensity to Gatlin’s songwriting on lead single “If She Was a Boy”. Not only was she able to recapture some of the most intense memories and feelings of her life, but to also then take those forward and see her fulfilled present and hopeful future in a whole new light.
Co-written with Chloe Kraemer and Amanda Cy, the track opens on a shimmering rhythm section and a slinky synth progression, Gatlin quickly pulls her youthful self forward—the naive lines delivered with a healthy dose of sensual romance. “I’m too afraid of what you think and who’s above/ But if she was a boy/ I’d be in love/ I’d be in love,” she sings, the song recounting a time of tragic distance from one’s heart but also somehow dizzy with potential. “Writing this song in a room in the middle of London with two other queer women was incredible,” Gatlin explains. “It’s not often I’ve gotten to make a track with all women, and I’m addicted to that energy.”
The Eldest Daughter brims with contributions from other talented women, including Jennifer Decilveo (writer and producer for the likes of Miley Cyrus, Lucius, and Hozier), singer-songwriter Liza Owen, and indie rocker Tessa Mouzourakis of English duo Tommy Lefroy. But at its core the album is truly a statement of Gatlin carving her own path and taking control of her narrative, both musically and philosophically. Not only did she produce or co-produce most of the tracks on the album, but The Eldest Daughter also makes bold, vulnerable choices that outpace Gatlin’s already powerful songwriting.
A chief example of that comes in the form of the self-assured “Man of the House”—a declaration of independence, of owning one’s life warts and all. “I wrote that one at a time when I was extremely frustrated and disappointed by some of the men in my life, personally and professionally,” Gatlin says. “I was handling all these problems in my life, and then realized that I was handling the problems. I had a feeling of complete autonomy and control over myself unlike I’d ever had before, which inspired this song.” The resulting track bobs and churns, acoustic scrape and splashy cymbals building a twangy feminist indie rock epic. The piano-driven “Soho House Valet” provides the perfect counterpart—the “north star of the album,” a song that both shares intimate details of familial strife but wryly puzzles out the very point of songwriting: “Heavy, I don’t mean to put that on you,” she repeatedly soars on the chorus. The song itself is cathartic, but so is being mature enough to realize that she can push through the layers of societal expectation to reach it. “As the eldest daughter of my family, I’ve always felt like I had to be strong and never burden anyone, but digging through stuff I never expected to share and then sharing this song anyway started a healing process,” Gatlin says.
Similarly, the record’s centering of Florida skillfully holds layered meaning: part honest, intimate memory, part totemic signifier of the tradition she’s running from. The album opens on the golden breeze of “Florida Man”—“written on a dreary, dreary day in London with a Brit, of course,” Gatlin laughs. The track channels the Britrock glow of The Verve and Primal Scream to give a quick and confident rejection of the expectations that’d been placed on her: “Now I’m in a bluer state/ Was over your prude parade/ It’s my life/ It don’t look like yours.”
Album highlight “Jesus Christ & Country Clubs” exemplifies the moment of rebellion, Gatlin looking around at her youthful surroundings and realizing just where it was leading her. “I’m going nowhere,” she cries out, the song as steamy and inescapable as the Florida heat. “I played a part for so many years growing up and when I finally left Florida I really got to discover who I am—and parts of who I am are rejected by my community and family,” Gatlin says. But this isn’t a purely joyful escape; the pain of shedding her skin stings: “I was your star, now I’m a meteorite.”
Later, “The Hill” aims that refusal to her religious upbringing, and how the feeling of loss stretched from God to her family to herself. “Walking away from Christianity was the greatest loss of my life and the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through,” Gatlin says. And when the slow acoustic build fades away to leave behind a church-like chorus, Gatlin is still in pain despite the decision to move forward: “I’ve been lost ever since/ Can’t go back to the house up there on the hill/ Still I’m asking.”
That duality is what makes The Eldest Daughter shine brightest. This is, to be sure, a record of refusal, of joy in creating a chosen life, of rejecting the expectations of others and defining your own world; but it’s also a record firmly rooted in the loss that naturally comes in that experience, the pained look back at what good there was in the midst of the repression. On album closer “Kissimmee”, flashes of imagery conjure up a childhood in Florida as a “barefoot little wild child,” as Gatlin puts it. The “fields of innocence” are littered with pink camo pellet guns and red
pickup trucks, the back roads a complex reality neither serene nor nefarious—but they are always calling back home. “This record is me exploring distance and perspective from my past, of owning the good and the bad and how they both informed the way I’ve made my own life,” she says. “I know now who I am, where I’m from, and where I’m going.”