The latest full length LP from Faye Webster, including “Better
Distractions” (which landed on Barack Obama’s 2020 end of year
playlist).
I Know I’m Funny haha is Webster’s most realized manifestation yet of this
emotional and musical alchemy. Continuing to bloom from her 2019 breakthrough
and Secretly Canadian debut Atlanta Millionaires Club, Webster’s sound draws
as much from the lap-steel singer-songwriter pop of the 1970s and teardrop
country tunes as it does from the audacious personalities of her city’s rap
and R&B community.
The album began for Webster with the stirring ballad “In a Good Way,” as in
“You make me want to cry in a good way”—an instant-classic Faye Webster
one-liner. It’s beguilingly simple, the kind of melody and arrangement that
seem to have existed forever. A sense of relief charges the neo-psychedelic pop
of “Cheers,” where Webster experiments with an overdriven guitar tone. She
also collaborated, on “Overslept,” with the Japanese artist Mei Ehara, who
she calls the biggest influence on her new music.
Webster’s music is full of personality. Many of her songs contain bits of
girl-group-esque talk-singing, which colour her atypical story-songs.
Webster says she’s in a growth mindset, pushing herself to learn more, to be
more vulnerable. “Growth is really important to me,” she says. “I hope
people will relate to my songs, and not just be like ‘this is a good record’
but ‘this makes me feel something. This is making me think differently, this
is making me question things.’ I told myself a few years ago that I was
going to be more honest in my song writing, that honesty is the best route to
take with music. If I have a voice and people are listening to me, I’m not
going to waste it.”