When she begun creating her first album, Arianna O’Dell was not a musician — she was just a woman who went through a bad breakup and wanted to write a song about it. “I started to write poems, and then I was thinking, ‘Hey, I wonder if I can turn this into a song,'” she remembers. “So, I googled ‘how to make a song,’ and I found Fiverr, which had a lot of composers and vocalists and mixing engineers and people who could help produce music.”
On Fiverr, a freelance online marketplace, she noticed profiles with lines like “I can write your song.” She sent a few of these artists her lyrics, along with a description of the kind of sound she wanted, and they sent her back samples of them singing the songs. After selecting singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Julian Sherwood based on the sentiment he captured in his singing, which brought her to tears, she found she found composer Matt Welch and producer Nathaniel Wolkstein to collaborate on the album. She named the project Outsourced Feelings, and together, they recorded and released the album Outsourced Feelings last year.
Fast forward to early this year, and O’Dell found herself going through another breakup as the Coronavirus pandemic was hitting her home base in New York City. She decided to channel her emotions and took advantage of her newfound free time to begin another Outsourced Feelings album. “For me, that’s like the ultimate therapy: being able to write out your negative and painful thoughts and then create something that sonically sounds really beautiful,” says O’Dell, whose main job is running a marketing and PR agency.
The new album, Songs For Introverts (And Extroverts Too) (out October 20), features collaborations with 12 different artists, producers, composers, and album art designers from around the world. Sherwood reappears on the indie-rock-style track “High Horse,” and other tracks feature vocalists Steve Eamer, Sofi Simesen de Bielke, August Petrén, and the duo Bad Choices (Jonas Galindo and Javier Dorantes). The composition and production were also a team effort, involving Eamer, de Bielke, Petrén, and Bad Choices, as well as Nathaniel Wolkesten and Matt Welch.
The musical genres and styles are as diverse as the musicians themselves: the catchy, poppy “Lost in Love” sounds like it could be heard on a Top 40 station, “Train Tracks” has a lo-fi garage-rock vibe reminiscent of The Strokes, “Don’t Let Strangers Break Your Heart” is more fitting for a piano bar, and the French-inspired breakup song “Baise Toi” sounds almost like a showtune.
O’Dell’s interest in music developed during childhood, when she’d obsessively google the meanings of lyrics she heard on the radio. She describes her role as project manager of the music — the main ingredient she contributes is the lyrics, but she assembles the team, gives them feedback, and provides instructions like “I like this older Matchbox 20 vibe,” and “Can you put some strings on this track?”
“One thing I’ve learned working with artists and creatives is it’s best to give them creative freedom,” she says. “I don’t demand timelines either — I don’t expect them to turn it around quickly. I think giving them that creative freedom made the album really great.”
The other key to success for O’Dell was to forget about profit and fame and just have fun with the album. “I learned to go in with no expectations that it’s going to be a hit or that I’m going to make money from this song and just go in making something that you want,” she says. “That’s when the best art really comes through, as opposed to when you’re striving to monetize something or you have a big goal in mind. That makes it difficult to really create music.”
This attitude proved difficult to maintain at times because the project was expensive — she estimates it cost between $6,000-$8,000 total — but she received a lot of support on Kickstarter, raising over $2000 to “bring soothing music to the world.”
In addition to providing comfort during a difficult time, she hopes that the songs are relatable. “When people listen to the album, I want them to feel emotions during a time when we’re so numb with stress and anxiety,” she says. “I think in particular, it reaches out to people who are pining for someone or have a broken heart or are aspiring to find a lover in the future.”
She also hopes to inspire non-musicians who are interested in the music-making process to get involved. “If I could do it with zero experience, so can anybody — the tools are all available online,” she says. “I do hope that more people try to make music even if they don’t have any kind of experience because it is very therapeutic. If you can’t have love, you can at least have a song.”
Follow the Outsourced Feelings project via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for ongoing updates.
