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 By the time Erin McCarley issued Love, Save the Empty in the first week of 2009, saturation on radio and TV (including placement in several hit shows, most notably “Grey’s Anatomy,” in a Rhapsody spot and in the ubiquitous movie trailer for He’s Just Not That Into You) had already launched her premiere CD to #5 on the iTunes Top Albums index. Moreover, as the digital store’s Single of the Week, “Pony (It’s OK)” was downloaded for free a record-setting 660,000 times. McCarley also got a boost from a late-2008 appearance on the Hotel Café Tour alongside Ingrid Michaelson, Rachael Yamagata, Meiko and others.
McCarley describes her 1980s and ’90s childhood in the ’burbs of Dallas as an idyllic mélange of dance classes and choir practice. After a layover at Baylor University, she transported herself to San Diego, where the year-round perfect weather allowed her to hang at the beach between fronting a country cover band and contracting an addiction to songwriting.
A timely introduction to Jamie Kenney proved crucial to McCarley’s musical growth; as producer, engineer, arranger, orchestrator, guitarist, keyboardist, backing vocalist and co-writer, his contributions to Love, Save the Empty were paramount. McCarley and Kenney recorded in Nashville (to where she eventually relocated), creating a collection of soaring pop songs that flat out rock. Drenched in sing-along melodies, her music has shared sentences with the Beatles, Alanis Morissette, Sara Bareilles and Sheryl Crow; Esquire noted that McCarley sounds as if “Katy Perry tried to channel Joni Mitchell.”
If the zero-to-200 pace of her fledgling career seems a bit insane, know that it’s exactly what McCarley expected. “This may sound kinda weird,” she told one writer, “but whenever I’d hoped for this, I had sort of envisioned what’s going on right now.”
Provenance: Garland, Texas
Latest Release: Love, Save the Empty (2009)
© 2009 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.
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