COUNTRY, FOLK AND INDIE ROCK

Take a listen to Starr’s Don’t Believe In Me.

Starr’s singing is both warm and bold throughout, her words softened by the perspective gained from her cohorts without losing the fire of her convictions. She mixes compassion with a sense of purpose that hearkens back to the message-forward spirit of the 1960s folk movement. It’s a matter, she says, of being pointed without being angry. “One of the things I’ve learned is that, if you want to communicate something to somebody, you have to do it in a way that they can hear you,” Starr says.

Girl I Used to Be is a nine-track album of self discovery. Starr’s first new music since her 2017 EP What if There is No Destination and first full-length in nearly a decade, it was produced by longtime friend Neilson Hubbard, engineered by Danny Aldredge, and features cowrites with talented young songwriters like Carly Paige, Katie Pruitt, and Dominique Arciero.

Songs like “Just a Little Rain,” “Don’t Believe in Me,” and “Nobody’s Breaking Your Heart” not only find Starr confronting her own demons but, perhaps more importantly, holding herself accountable for her own happiness. Her performances — often recorded solo, in one or two takes — sound loose, free, and unburdened by her past, no matter how heavy the subject matter. That, she says, is all down to the women she wrote with.