The Breakthrough “Goldstar Girl:” Taylor Bickett on her Debut Album, the Music Industry, and “A Lot of the Little Things”

By Kyla Lemieux

Ever since the release of her debut single in 2021, fans of Taylor Bickett have been eagerly awaiting a full-length album from the singer-songwriter. On July 17th, 2026, the day finally arrived. With the release of Nothing I Can’t Undo, Bickett has proved that hits don’t only come in the form of singles. From the album’s opening track, “The Arsonist” –a deeply personal song about Bickett’s isolating experiences in the music industry– to its closing number, “Venice” –which acts as a nostalgic yet positive final chapter for the project– Nothing I Can’t Undo includes all the credentials needed for a definitive breakthrough album. The personal-yet-relatable lyrics paired with the distinctive melodies and stunning vocals make Bickett’s music stand out from the many up-and-coming artists of the generation.

Recently, I was lucky enough to discuss Nothing I Can’t Undo with Bickett herself. Continue reading to learn an abundance about her fascinating career.

 

Kyla: “Firstly, I want to ask about your musical past, and how it’s led to where you are in your musical career today. You have just released your debut album, Nothing I Can’t Undo, but your first ever single was released all the way back in 2021. How do you find that the music on your album is similar to the music you were releasing when your career began? How is it different?”

 

Taylor Bickett: “I think it’s actually interesting. “Break My Own,” my first single, sounds very different from the tracks on this album. I was really figuring out what my sound was. It leans a lot more heavily into pop. But I think that, thematically, it’s actually very similar. The title track of my album, “Nothing I Can’t Undo,” is pretty much about avoidance and about, you know, wanting to run away before you get hurt, and that is, like, the exact theme of “Break My Own.” I don’t know if that means that I haven’t grown at all in the past six years, but I do find that interesting. I think lyrically and thematically, I carry a lot of through lines with me from that time, but I also think that I have just really dived into a more organic singer-songwriter sound, sort of leaning more towards folk these days. But I have a lot of love still for the older tracks.”

 

Kyla: “When did you begin writing songs for Nothing I Can’t Undo? Did you have concepts for a debut album back when you first started releasing music, or was this album something that came to you more recently?”

 

Taylor Bickett: “No, I had no idea. 
When I started making music, I just had no idea what I was doing. It was very much figuring it out as I went along. I always knew I wanted to make an album, but I think January 2024 is when I wrote the first song for the album, “Driving in the Dark.” I didn’t even have going into it, like, a concept or a theme for the album; it was more of, just, I started writing songs that I felt really strongly about, and I felt like it was the right time in my career for an album, and I sort of put everything together, in order to create the album, as opposed to kind of conceptualizing it beforehand, and then I naturally found that the songs I was writing, and the way they sounded, worked really well together. I started recording it in September of 2025. So, like, a year and a half after I started writing it, I started recording it, and then another good chunk of time before it actually came out. So, yeah, it’s been a process.”

 

Kyla: “Many artists talk about how difficult it is to choose which songs to include on an album after writing many they feel very connected to. Did you experience this, or did the eleven tracks on the album stand out to you right off the bat?”

 

Taylor Bickett: “A little bit of both. I was definitely deciding between songs, but a lot of the ones that made it
 I felt strongly about from the beginning. I would say that there were songs that didn’t make the cut that I liked, but the more that I sat with the album, I was just like, “no, this is right.” It was difficult to decide exactly how the album was gonna be laid out, and what was gonna be on it, but I do think I had a good gut feeling about these songs.”

 

Kyla: “Are there any songs you wrote during the process that were particularly hard to leave off? And if so, do you plan on releasing them at a later date?”

 

Taylor Bickett: “There are a couple that, I can’t say for sure if they’ll come out, but I also think, it’s been so long now since I started writing the album that I think that there’s probably new things for me to say and new songs for me to write.”

 

Kyla: “Nothing I Can’t Undo travels across many subject matters. For example, “Genesis” focuses on the inspiring feeling of being in love, while other tracks, such as “The Arsonist,” deal with feelings of insecurity and isolation. Does one type of song come to you more naturally, or does it all depend on the situation at hand? Are there any types of situations that feel particularly easy to write about, or particularly difficult?”

 

Taylor Bickett: “I think it depends. I definitely, in the past, have found it easier to write a breakup song, and I think a lot of people feel that way, just because, you know, you have all these visceral emotions when you’re going through something hard. But then when things are good, you’re like, “oh, no, it’s just good. I don’t need to overanalyze this.” 
It is a challenge, but I do have probably my happiest song to date on this album, one of my first truly pure love songs, “Genesis,” on this album. That one was surprisingly easy to write, even though I typically have a hard time writing love songs, because I felt so strongly about that person. So it really does depend, but as a general rule, I think it’s easier for me to write sad songs.”

 

Kyla: “The album is filled with deeply thought through lyrics. Is there one particular lyric that you still can’t believe you wrote? Do you have any notable memories about how that lyric, or another, came to you?”

 

Taylor Bickett: “There are a couple lyrics that I really like on the album. One of them is in the song “If Only,” and the lyric is, 
”You’d rather give a poem than a promise. I’d rather have a promise than a poem.” That one really stuck with me, and I just still really like it. I’m usually so hard on myself, and the fact that I still really like it is saying something. The other one that comes to mind is the last lyric of the whole album, and it’s, “I want a little bit of a lot of things, and a lot of the little things.” 
So I guess I have a tendency to do those kind of flip flopped lines, but I like that one because I was just trying to figure out how to express exactly that. I was dancing around it in the whole song, but it was satisfying as a songwriter to get to that moment in the song, and think, “oh, of course. This is what it is.” It’s like, “I want so much from life, and from the world, but I also want to appreciate the little moments. And, you know, the details of this life.”

 

Kyla: “Nothing I Can’t Undo, as well as your previous music, feels completely unique and individual, but every artist has some other artistic inspiration they draw from. What other musicians or albums acted as a creative motivation while you were creating this album? How did you incorporate these inspirations into your own music?”

 

Taylor Bickett: “So, I was listening to a lot of Samia last year. Around the time I was recording, and a little bit before, I was super into her music, and what I love about her music is how it is so not direct. It’s metaphorical and subtle, and you almost never know what she’s talking about. You have to really listen carefully to her lyrics to understand because it’s like poetry. 
She’s never saying exactly what she means, typically. And she’s saying it in such a cool way, and that really pushed me, ’cause as I feel like I can be more of a direct writer. It challenged me to think outside the box with how to say something, and maybe put a spin on something that could make it more interesting or compelling. So she was definitely a big inspiration around that time. I also fell in love with the album Calico by Ryan Beatty. It came out a few years ago, and I just played it on repeat. I love the production, it is so beautiful. As I was trying to lean away from pop production and a little more into these organic, real instruments, I definitely was inspired by him. The last one is Golden Hour by Kasey Musgraves. That’s, like, one of the best albums of all time, and it totally marked a moment in time for me in 2018 when it came out, when I was in college. I was so obsessed with it. But then, revisiting it when I’m a bit older, I admire the songwriting. It is just such a well-crafted album, and I definitely thought of that album a lot. That’s the epitome of what I’m trying to do.”

 

Kyla: “My personal favorite question to ask every artist is, what’s a story from the writing process that the public doesn’t yet know? Are there any funny or significant anecdotes from the process that you can share?”

 

Taylor Bickett: “Hmmm, that’s a good question. I have really not talked about this much online, or, shared a lot about my song “The Arsonist.” That’s the first song of the album, and it was sort of an interesting writing process, because I wrote the first verse, and then I didn’t touch it for a long time, and then I wrote the second verse, not realizing it would be part of the same song. I wrote the second verse, thinking it was an entirely new song I was writing. And then I was in a session with Jake Finch and Colin Pastore in Nashville, and I brought the first verse to them, and I was like, “I don’t know where to go with this.” We figured out where to go with it, and then we were thinking about the second verse, and I was like, “I have this verse written in my phone. I just didn’t realize it was gonna be for this song.” So that was cool. The inspiration, the reason I wrote that first verse all the way back in 2023, was because I had just gotten out of a terrible relationship in the music industry, and I felt like the people I was working with did not respect me as a person, and the art I was creating. And that was super painful and difficult. I feel like I sort of wrote the song as, like, “fuck the industry, I need to burn all of this down in order to be the artist that I’m supposed to be.” I say sometimes, “this song is a letter to the music industry.” I have a lyric in the second verse, where I say, “Can you be broke and a sellout? I’m cooking dinner for the local bandits,” 
and the reason I said that is ’cause sometimes you feel like, in the music industry, you’re just being preyed on all the time, and I’m like, “oh, I’m selling out, but where were the funds? This doesn’t feel like I thought it would feel.”
People can be very parasitic. I haven’t talked much about that, because it’s a bit more of a complex thing to write about than a love story or a breakup.”

 

Kyla: “What do you find to be the most rewarding part of being a musician?”

 

Taylor Bickett: “I think the most rewarding part is just getting to reach individual people and make them feel something. 
Like, if I get a message from someone saying, “this song helped me through something,” or I meet them at a show. Especially meeting someone in person. That is so special, because it’s one thing to see words on a screen, but to actually see a living, breathing human in front of you, telling you that you helped them or that you inspired them in some way… that is so amazing. And it’s a big part of why I love to make music so much. But I also feel like it is just really rewarding to put words to feelings that you had, that you couldn’t figure out how to express. It’s like a puzzle being solved, and there is a lot of satisfaction with that. It brings my mind peace to be able to create something out of what I’ve experienced.”

 

Kyla: “In the upcoming months, you’re embarking on a tour across the United States. What are you most looking forward to about the tour? Any specific songs you can’t wait to perform, or any cities you’re excited about visiting?”

 

Taylor Bickett: “I’m so excited. There are a couple cities that I’ve never played in before, so I’m really looking forward to that. It will be by far the longest headline run I’ve ever done. And most of these cities, it will be the first time I’ve ever headlined there. I’m really excited to play a lot of the songs, but also to play them a little differently than how they sound on the record. I’m not gonna completely change them up, but I want someone to be able to come to a show and feel like they got something unique out of it, not just something they can hear on Spotify. So I definitely am excited to mess around with arrangements to make it unique, and I feel like that’s also a fun way to bring more creativity into the process.”

 

Kyla: “In the album’s closing track, “Venice,” you write about specific things you wish to experience, stating, “I want a little bit of a lot of things.” What about professionally? What are some goals of yours you hope to experience because of your music? Any venues you hope to play, or artists you dream of collaborating with someday?”

 

Taylor Bickett: “I live in Nashville, Tennessee, so it is my absolute dream to play the Ryman. That is such an iconic, historic venue, and it’s definitely a dream. I’m also such a big fan of Phoebe Bridgers. I have been, for years and years now, since she only had one album out, and it would be an absolute dream come true to collaborate with her. Even meet her, honestly.”

In an industry full of artists that feel like repeats of each other, listeners crave uniqueness, and Taylor Bickett provides just that. Nothing I Can’t Undo mixes storytelling and metaphor to create a distinct artistic energy. The project captures countless emotions, experiences, and moments, and while each song is completely individual, the eleven tracks fit together meticulously. Filled with aspects of folk, indie, singer-songwriter, and pop, Nothing I Can’t Undo seems to have something for everyone. Be sure to check out all of Bickett’s upcoming activities, including tour dates, at https://www.taylorbickett.com/.