Odie Leigh Discusses Musical Journey, TikTok, and More
Photo courtesy of @sunbleachfilm
This interview has been edited for clarity & conciseness.
Metaphor-filled acoustic songs about love, life, and growing up is how I’d describe Odie Leigh’s music. Towards the end of her college career as a film major, Leigh found herself in the spotlight. The easy-going artist from Louisiana gained popularity after her first song titled “Fine With Me” went viral almost instantaneously with 50k views and a comment section filled with good feedback. Since then the musician has had an untraditional rise to fame.
In an interview with Five Cent Sound, Leigh shared that she began making music after craving the intense passion and joy she saw in her musically talented friends. Through her music, she has found a community of people who connect with her words and feelings. During the interview, she spoke in even more metaphors apologizing for the bad reception because she lived in a “metal tube” (an RV).
The artist explained why she started posting on TikTok, her songwriting process, the meaning behind the lyrics of one of her songs, and more.
Five Cent Sound: Who did you grow up listening to?
Odie Leigh: Micheal Jackson and Sugarland. Whatever they had in the car.
After doing a deep dive on the web, I learned you're creative in all different mediums like painting and photography. Where does music fit in all of this? Have you always wanted to pursue music?
I always sang in church, and every Christmas we’d do Jesus Christmas-themed musicals. So, singing and music was always a part of my life. But I never thought I was going to be a musician, that was never in the cards for me. I have a degree in filmmaking, like this was not what I expected to do.
That’s fun. Where did you pursue a degree in filmmaking?
I went to Loyola in New Orleans. It's this little Catholic college. I am not Catholic. I was raised Lutheran, but you know, that doesn't matter. And I knew whenever I went to college, I wanted to stay in Louisiana, and it was the only school I applied to, and I got the scholarships. So Loyola I went.
How did you start in music if you didn’t want to originally pursue a career in it?
I don't know. I just wanted to learn how to play the guitar, and I taught myself the basic chords when I was 13. Then I stopped playing guitar because I started wearing long nails. But I've always loved music. For my high school graduation, I asked my parents to give me a banjo and a harmonica instead of an actual graduation gift. And I can't play either, but I had a brief obsession with bluegrass banjo in high school. But you know, I never expected to be a musician. Then in college, the pandemic happened, and I went on a road trip with my friend and they just have such a passion for music, and just enjoy playing the guitar and singing, and I was like “What am I doing? I wish I found this much joy.” So then I picked it up again and kind of just started playing, and then started writing my own song.
I think that’s so funny that you mentioned the banjo because in junior year of high school, I went out and bought one that’s just been collecting dust ever since.
[The] banjo is just an instrument that calls to people. I heard the story about Grimes. She bought a banjo and then she was on her way home with the banjo she just bought, and some scary man was following her. So she just turned around and beat him up with the banjo, and then that was that. There was no more banjo, and no more scary man.
When did you decide you wanted to do music/pursue it full-time?
It's weird. I never really feel like I made the choice to pursue it seriously. If anything it was the seriousness of other people and their music that really turned me off. I went to a college that had a lot of people studying music, and they were all so pretentious and knew so much about it that it all seemed like something I couldn't do. I was never going to understand music in the way that they did because they're going to class learning about it. And during the pandemic, like I said, I was hanging out with this friend of mine and they just had such joy for it. They weren't trying to be famous. They weren't trying to make it. They were just enjoying this thing, and it just totally shifted my perspective of what music could be because the reason I had never done it before was because I didn't like the clout-chasey, self obsessed thing that I saw so many people doing with it. So during the pandemic, you know, college was cancelled. I was just kind of in my house. I moved in with these two random dudes and I just started playing music for myself. I wasn't around people who were so pretentious about their art that it made me never want to do mine. You know?
You moved in with two random dudes?
They were friends, that's a lie. They were two friends of mine. One of them was a rapper and the other one was a DJ.
So, you originally blew up on TikTok, correct?
Yeah, and that goes with living with those two dudes. I'm sure if you've read any other interview, this is the story. Those two dudes were having a contest to see who could blow up on Tik Tok first, and they didn’t include me in it. I was like, “Screw y'all. I'm gonna play.” And the first song I posted on Tik Tok got 50,000 views and I was like, “Oh my God.” And then the next song I posted on Tik Tok was “Ronnie's Song,” which now has [roughly] 2 million streams.
How much time passed between the start of you posting music to when you gained a following?
I remember whenever it first started happening, I told a friend of mine who's ambiguously old and jaded. He was like, “Oh, okay, you have 50,000 views. So what?” and I was like, “What? It's a big deal.” He was like, “No, you should have 100,000 views and then but when you get there, I mean, you can always have 200,000, and then after that 500,000, it's just numbers. It doesn't mean anything.” This honestly was the best thing for me to hear right at the beginning because yeah, this doesn't mean anything. But what does mean something is actually connecting with people. The first song I posted got some numbers, and the second song I posted which was a day later was “Ronnie’s Song” which I then recorded the next week, and then put it on the internet and on Spotify, January 1, 2021. So I posted my first Tik Tok in December 2020 for the first song out in January 2021.
Can you tell me how you felt after you released your first single “Ronnie’s Song?”
I was just kind of like, “Okay, well, that's done. What am I gonna do next? Am I going to do this?” You know, because I, again, I never expected to be a musician and how I felt was like, “Well, I guess I'm doing this.”
If it weren’t for going viral on there, do you think you would have pursued a career in music?
No, not at all. The only reason I kept on doing it was because people were asking me to, and I felt this incredible pressure to connect with people. I guess pressure isn't quite the right word. It wasn't the virality because none of them even went that viral. It was more just “People are enjoying this, and I'm enjoying this. So I'm just gonna keep on doing it.”
Were there times where you felt discouraged to pursue music?
No. This sounds insane. But it's hard to feel discouraged whenever you aren't dying to make it happen, if that makes any sense. I'm just so happy to be here. You know, if things keep on working out, that's incredible and beautiful and I'm so lucky to be able to connect with people and write songs and travel. But at the same time, if tomorrow it all goes away, I would be so happy. Not that it's gone away, but my life would still be rich. You know? I can't feel discouraged because I'm just doing the thing. You can't knock me off of it. I'm just living my life, and it just happens to be making music right now.
Were you in disbelief [of your music going viral] or were you more like “I’m just gonna see where this goes?”
The best way I can describe the way my career has happened was the path just opened up and I was like “Okay let’s go that way.” It's like I'm on a hike, and I'm walking down this path, and I'm gonna keep on following this great trail, right? But then suddenly, it's “Oh, look at that red marker. Should I go over there?” Sure. Let's see what happens, and that's exactly what it was. It wasn't like I was like, “Oh, thank god.” I was so content just working in film for the rest of my life, [and] never leaving Louisiana. I'm fine with it. I would love to just live here forever. Before all this happened I was talking to friends saying, “I don't need to see the world. I'm so happy here. I can just google it.”
That’s so different from the way a lot of people describe their hometown and surrounding areas. What fuels your love for Louisiana?
I mean, it's just home. I don't know. I just love it. I love it so much. I really can’t tell you. I go to other places and there's just nowhere else like it. Everyone says this but it's like: the food's good, the people are friendly, we celebrate everything. Everything's a party. There's just so much room for self expression. And I think that's something that people don't think about often whenever they think about the South, and Louisiana is definitely its own thing. But even real Cajun culture, it is all about community and festivities and music and getting together. Not to say it's not really hard to live here. Houses flood all the time. Shit goes wrong, all the time. But we're just so used to it. If a tree falls on my neighbor's house, I'm not gonna freak out. I'm gonna go over and ask them what they need help with or, No, I'm not even gonna go ask. I'm just gonna start picking up the branches. That's just how it works here.
What does success look like to you?
Oh that's hard. I mean, right now I just really want to buy a house. That is my goal.
So, are you done with the RV then?
I mean, no. It's perfect for me right now. And I don't think I'll ever sell it, but I wanna own a house! I would feel like I really made it [in life] and I would feel really secure. Like, I own this thing [and] it's not gonna roll away. I also want to say the success I'm feeling right now is whenever I get to meet people who listen to my music. Actually connecting with people and having people feel heard through my music is also success. So owning a house [and] actually connecting with people.
Can you tell me a bit about your songwriting process?
I try not to think, when I'm writing a song I just say what I have to say, and I don't judge it. And I've gotten to the point in my own songwriting journey and I guess, journey as a person where if I write something that I'm genuinely scared for other people to hear, or genuinely, really embarrassed or nervous about. That's whenever I know that I've hit something real.
Your songs are so metaphorical so I’m wondering, do you read and write outside of songwriting?
I don’t read at all, and I don’t write. I just have a lot of ADHD. Reading is just hard for me, but I just bought a Kindle, so I'm going to start reading now. But you know, in a weird way, I kind of feel like my lack of input or references has helped me really express myself through my own lens. I have made it a very, very clear point to not listen to popular folk music, like I've never listened to Big Thief. I mean, I can't even tell you. I just don't listen to music like that because I feel like whether you want to or not, everything is gonna get digested and come back out again. I just don't want the current “what's working” to come back out at me because it's already working for someone else. I don't want to be someone else. I want to keep on staying true to my own voice.
How would your friends describe you? How would you describe yourself?
Oh god, I hate that question. I have no sense of self, and I don't think I wanna know.
“Crop Circles” has almost 3 million streams on Spotify, can you tell me about the inspiration behind this song?
That song really just came from frustration. When I first posted that song on TikTok [it] had totally slowed down. I was getting [roughly] 80 views on every video and I had [around] 10,000 followers. And I was like, “This is so frustrating. I don't understand what's going on? This is so annoying. What did I do wrong?” That song is more about the guitar than the things I was saying. I wanted to write a song that was challenging for me on guitar, and a friend of mine had sent me a voice recording of them playing an old song, and I was like, “I'm gonna try to do that.” And at the time, I was about to graduate college. I had a couple months left, and I was working full time. I felt like I existed in an in-between, between adult and child. And I was talking to my roommate/landlord about how dating sucks and her advice was “You should lie about your age. Like, you're way more mature than 21. Just start talking to people. You're 25.” And I was like, “That's insane. I'm not going to do that. But I will use this idea somehow.” And so that's where the first line came from. And then, you know, the rest is just something I said.
So, do you think you've changed from who you were at the beginning of your virality on TikTok to now?
Oh, absolutely. And I think that it's so weird. Lyrics and writing songs and words. “I don't think I've changed” [is about] defending myself. I think that whenever you start to actually change as a person, and outgrow people, people will use change as a bad thing like, “you've changed in a bad way.” So that's kind of what that's about. I'm defending myself. I don't think I've changed, I am still the same person that you knew. But of course, to stay the same forever would be horrible. We should all want to change, right?
You released a new single “Chutes & Ladders.” What is this song about?
I mean, it's just a play for play and very surface level. It's just a “not relationship” I was in. It's also about how relationships are hard and it's scary to open yourself up to another person and to be not quite sure [of] what you want or what they want. And in a way, that's kind of what the song is about. It's just kind of like, “I'm gonna do this thing and see what happens,” and it doesn't always go well.
How does it feel to go on your first tour?
This is my first big professional tour. It’s exciting but it’s also nerve wracking playing this many shows. I don’t know if I can do it. I don't know if I can physically, I mean I'm going to physically do it. But can I? We will find out. It's just one of those things where you just have to dive in. I'm doing it. I'm not going to tiptoe. I'm going to do the thing.
Is there anything you want fans to know about you or this tour?
I can't think of anything. I hope my answers were good. I don't remember any of them.