Graphic by Michaela Bassick
Savanna Leigh started writing music when she was just 6 years old, carrying around a small notebook in which she would scribble poems and the beginnings of song lyrics. At 8, she had plotted out an album named “Freedom.” (Why was it called that? She doesn’t really remember.) While her first project may have lacked specifics, it signaled something really important about her — music has been in her heart for a long time.
“As a child you have a passion, and sometimes as you get older your ultimate dream changes,” Leigh reflected. “But mine just kinda stayed the same, and I’m pretty much a decisive person. Once I set my mind to something, that’s what I’m going to do.”
She’s been making music ever since — perhaps with a bit more planning and detail than her proto-album “Freedom,” which she’s unfortunately forgotten all of the songs from. Leigh started releasing covers on SoundCloud in her early college years, but it was ultimately the beginning of the pandemic that pushed her to begin releasing her own music. She decided to take a year off school and really focus on creating, which is when she began writing music with the band Nightly in Nashville. “They were the first people who really took me under their wing and brought me into the pop space,” she said.
Her collaboration with them resulted in her first EP, “changes,” in 2021. Leigh received a huge boost early last year when she released a cover of “The Scientist” by Coldplay, which “really grew legs.” “I hit 200,000 streams in one week,” she recalled. “It was crazy — I had never had anyone stream my music like that before.”
Spurred on by her success, she put out her album “the way i see it” in late 2022, her first full-length project. All the while, she’s been shaping her sound, working with her team to centralize her projects around cohesive concepts and make her vision come to life. Now she’s on the cusp of a new breakthrough as she begins releasing music from her upcoming project.
Leigh’s music is unapologetically raw, and she’s not afraid to cast light on the darker parts of herself in her work. The 22-year-old singer-songwriter takes this vulnerability to new heights in her latest single, “arm’s length.” “arm’s length” captures a storm of emotions around a complicated reconnection with an ex. While smooth and euphoric on the surface, the song taps into the contradictions and gray space that exists when getting back together with someone. Can you trust them? Is there a future for both of you? Should you tell your friends about it, or keep it a secret?
Leigh has distilled these mixed feelings into the metaphor of a blue balloon, a recurring visual cue that occurs often in her TikTok videos and Tumblr blog promoting “arm’s length” and eventually around her other upcoming music. “A blue balloon represents naivety, coming to a decision where you have to stay or let go of something for your own peace — even though for some reason you think you can do both. That’s rarely the reality in how it will work out,” she explained.
It is clear that Leigh is torn between holding on or letting go right from the opening lyrics: “Whenever I come back and we fake love / I leave the door cracked and my heart shut / Stupid of me to think that we could get away clean.”
Much like the way her head and her heart were at odds, Leigh noted how the production of “arm’s length” juxtaposed with the lyrical meaning. “I write sad songs; it’s what comes naturally to me,” she said. But “arm’s length” “has a production that counteracts the piece lyrically, and I think that makes it more interesting, because you can listen to it wherever you want and it sounds like a happy song — but it’s not.”
For the record, Leigh and her ex are in a healthier place now, but the song speaks to a particular period a few years ago when she wasn’t sure if getting involved again was the right choice. “In my head at (that time), we weren’t gonna get back together,” she explained. “I was just like ‘toxically’ seeing him, but now we’re kind of in a more mature place and willing to leave the door open to see where things go.”
However, her relationship has been a secret from her friends up until this point, meaning that the release was a huge decision for her. “I had never written a song about this, because my friends and family know that basically every song I’ve ever put out is something that’s actually happened to me,” Leigh explained. “I knew that once I put it out, they would hear it and be like ‘What did you do?’ I needed to come clean eventually, and ‘arm’s length’ just forced the timeline for me a bit.”
This single is part of a larger project set to be released later this year, an EP with a similar theme around on-and-off-again relationships and the in-between. “A lot of people write pop breakup anthems or love songs, but I don’t hear a lot of songs about being vulnerable enough to say that you’re reconnecting with someone,” Leigh said. Her project aims to fill in that space, examining what it’s really like to still feel attached, even if the world wants you to move on.
The project also has an impactful digital interactive element, as Leigh has been crafting an entire online ecosystem around her upcoming music. On her Tumblr, Leigh encourages her fans to share their stories about vulnerability and tough emotional decisions in a virtual, collective journal. Since she started her blog to be more honest and in touch with herself, she wanted to create a space for her listeners to do the same and create more of an exchange between artist and fan.
“I want this to be a community and safe space for everyone to feel like it’s okay to share their experiences and relate to one another judgment free,” she said. Fan activation is another recurring theme throughout her upcoming projects — and her current “No. 1 goal.” “Getting followers is one thing,” Leigh explained, “but it’s another to get people to actually show up to your show and be superfans. I want people who I can connect to on a personal level.”
Leigh is driven, grounded and intelligent about the way she markets herself; her biggest piece of advice for those starting in the industry is to know your stuff. Artists always pay attention to the creation side of music, but learning the industry is just as important. Leigh noted how the industry is “where you can get taken advantage of, especially as a young woman.”
“Both sides are equally important to me,” she continued. “I get deep into the business side, which triggers the people around me sometimes because they’re like ‘Savanna, go make songs.’”
Together with her team, she’s been curating content for her socials and seeking out her target audience, with fun segments like “Sip and Spill with Savanna Leigh” on her Instagram. Each episode finds Leigh cuddled up with a coffee, chatting about her new music with her 26K followers, but she’s as comfortable and unfiltered as she would be talking to a best friend. Like her Tumblr posts and TikTok videos, everything about Leigh’s online presence is genuine, and her personality shines through in the pithy way she speaks about the inspiration for her songs.
All of Leigh’s goals and ambitions for this year are driven by one reason: her true love of music. Leigh is well on her way to establishing herself in the industry, with over 72K TikTok followers and 77K monthly listeners on Spotify, but she keeps herself grounded in her “why”: “There’s a lot of highs and lows in the industry. If you don’t have a ‘why’ of why you’re pursuing this passion, it’s going to be hard to get through those,” she explained. “For me, it’s never been about followers or fame — it’s because I can’t see myself doing anything else.”
You can listen to “arm’s length,” as well as the rest of her discography, here on Spotify. (I highly recommend her cover of “The Scientist,” *chef’s kiss.*)
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