If you love emotional rollercoasters that dig deep into your subconscious and tell you exactly what you’re feeling, The Answer by Leanna Firestone is the album for you.
With the release of singles “Victory Lap” and “Town Ain’t Big Enough,” as well as the announcement of a tour, Firestone has had an exciting couple of months in the lead up to the release of The Answer. Firestone built up hype for the album by sharing multiple song snippets across her social media, picking catchy bridges and straight-to-the-heart lyrics to promote and provide backstories to the songs on the album.
Firestone weaves The Answer in such a way to tug at your heartstrings with tracks like “Not Yet” and “Judas (Martyr To My Misery),” and then make you want to get up and jump with “Best Friend’s New Boyfriends Union” and “Town Ain’t Big Enough.” While the singles were focused on the different aftermaths of breakups, the rest of the album is a reflection of herself and what people think of her, new relationships, and family issues.
At heart, Firestone is a masterful storyteller, and The Answer certainly showcases this, especially through the impactful song “Not Yet.” This track was introduced by Firestone as “the worst day of her life” where she was turned down by a dream label, and then found out her father (who she was no-contact with) had been unhoused and was experiencing medical issues. She documents her panic and her journey set to an acoustic guitar track, soft and unimposing to draw attention to her lyrics and quiet, poignant vocals. “Not Yet” is definitely a heavier track, meant to be savored and contemplated.
Self-image and what others think of you is something she touches on in “Confirmation Bias.” Throughout the song, Firestone explores her “knowing” that she’s the problem, assuming someone will leave her because her self-hatred is speaking to her and telling her the future. Firestone’s chorus speaks on her stubbornness to admit it could be any other reason but something she did wrong:
“So tell the bloodhounds the case is closed / Roll up the red string cause I’ve got it solved / Don’t confess you love me / There’s no use in lying / Don’t walk away, can’t change my confirmation bias”
This is one of the most relatable tracks on the album, speaking to a lot of people’s inherent belief that they did and keep doing something wrong to make people leave them, no matter the real reason. One line that sticks out strongly is, “It doesn’t matter if you hate me, because I feel like you do,” which feels like every insecure thought piled into one.
On the more upbeat side of things, “Best Friend’s New Boyfriends Union” has to be one of the most fun songs on the album. It’s a tale of losing your best friend every time she has a new boyfriend and deciding you need to do something about it. The instrumentals of this song are going to be a hit on tour if she chooses to play this track, full of guitar and bouncy sounds. Firestone goes on listing every time she was there for her best friend, but the friend’s “uglier replacement” is suddenly her whole world.
Of course, Firestone gets personal in this one, saying “I just need you to hear one thing / You’ve always been my sister / I’m angry cause I miss you.” Even in her upbeat tracks, Firestone knows how to get those emotions running.
The title track, “The Answer,” is the perfect conclusion to the album where Firestone laments over a relationship where she knows the end is coming. If she has to ask herself if this person is the one, then she knows what the answer is. This song is a lesson everyone can learn: if you aren’t certain about someone, they probably aren’t the one, even if it’s going to hurt. She struggles with breaking it off despite knowing it has to end, which many can relate to. The album ends on the words “the answer” which feels like a satisfying response to the feelings brought up in this album.
Before The Answer’s release, Crave was able to talk with Leanna Firestone about Nashville, her songwriting process and the album itself.
CRAVE: The Answer will be your longest project to date. How long have you been working on the songs on the album?
LEANNA: The first songs started to be recorded in January of 2025. However the first snippets of songs came earlier, some lines as early as 2022, with the first substantial pieces coming in the middle of 2023.
CRAVE: What was the process like creating the aesthetic for this album, with the bar and pool table pictures? Has it always been the idea or have the songs influenced the aesthetic/visuals as they have been written?
LEANNA: No! This is the first time where the aesthetics came after the album was already being created. Usually, I have the full concept for a project and can write to that concept, filling it out and making it whole as I go. The Answer created a new path where I felt as though the concept was revealing itself to me after some of the writing was already started. The visuals started to be conceptualized after about 20 songs were written (obviously, not all of which made the album) and were commented on by my manager as feeling like conversations you would have after a drink or two with your best girlfriends. And with that lightbulb turned on, the album visuals clicked in my head, and the concept for the album sprung into being!
CRAVE: Has your songwriting process changed or developed since you’ve begun releasing music? Are there elements that have stayed the same?
LEANNA: Definitely! I’ve felt that specifically on this project, my style has changed to be a lot slower! I used to write fiercely and frantically, pouring everything out and trying to tie it up as neatly as I could by myself. I was so protective over the stories and feelings I was sharing that I scarcely trusted another writer to touch my song at all, leading a lot of them to be unrefined train-of-thought style. This album — on top of being mostly not about my own life — was also written with the help of my insanely talented collaborators. Leading my style to have slowed and become more methodical and the record as a whole to be crafted far more carefully.
CRAVE: Where did your influence/inspiration come from for the album or for specific songs? Are they your own lived experiences, or things you’ve drawn on from people in your life or things you seen, read, or watched?
LEANNA: The inspiration for the album mostly came from the lives of my closest girlfriends (with permission, of course). I was able to find kernels of their stories that would relate back to something I had also experienced, and was then able to take the core, shared emotional truth of whatever situation and center that in a fictional narrative. Female friendship is not only one of my greatest influences for this record, but also one of my life’s greatest joys.
CRAVE: You’ve lived in Nashville for your whole career and you have a wide range of genres represented in your work. Does the massive country music scene in Nashville influence your work? If so, is it always a thought in your mind, or something you draw on when you feel it’s needed?
LEANNA: I think there’s no way to escape the reach of country music anywhere, but especially in Nashville. I’ve lived in Tennessee my whole life, and I feel that I draw on country music when I am connecting with my most inner self. I don’t necessarily intentionally pull from country influences, but it was the first genre of music I loved and I think that primitive connection shows up always- even if unconsciously.
CRAVE: You’re known for being deeply honest in your songwriting, in songs such as “BlackBox Warning” and “ESOEMOEHOED.” Is it a conscious thought, or is it something you’ve built yourself up to throughout your career?
LEANNA: I would say my creative and connective instinct is to be as honest as I can be. I’ve definitely made a conscious effort during this period of my life and art to be more thoughtful to the subjects in which I want to be unfiltered-ly honest and those that I want to be more reserved about. I want to make sure that I am refining my work on top of being honest, and that discernment has definitely developed throughout my career.
CRAVE: If you could describe the process of creating this album in five words, what would they be?
LEANNA: Incredible. Exploratory. So. Fucking. Fun.
CRAVE: You’ve achieved millions of streams since you started releasing music in 2020, which is amazing. How do you personally measure success?
LEANNA: I feel that there’s no more tangible measure of success than the energy of the rooms you play in on tour. My measure of success is that people leave the concert feeling less alone than they did when they walked in. Joy doubled from sharing it, and sorrow halved from sharing it. And in that regard, I would say I have been very, very successful.
CRAVE: How do you prepare ahead of an album release or a tour? Do you have specific routines or does it change depending on the project?
LEANNA: Like almost everything else in my life, I am bad at keeping routines. Whatever project cycle I am in determines how I “pre-game” so to speak, the era. In this era, I am going out with my friends, drinking cider, and playing lots of billiards and pinball. (Though, I’m not very good at either.)
CRAVE: You make a mention of “Hot Shot” in “Town Ain’t Big Enough.” Is this a real bar in Nashville or something you created for the storyline of The Answer? How does storytelling and world building fit into your writing process?
LEANNA: We actually went back and forth in the writers’ room about whether or not to make mention of any real bar, and ultimately decided that by fictionalizing Hot Shot it would allow for more creative freedom and worldbuilding. Every song that I then wrote, and the pre-written songs upon relisten, all became set in Hot Shot. I could imagine the day, the crowd, the drink that the subject matter of these songs were being talked about in the booths and barstools of my imagination. Hot Shot is entirely ours. Mine and my fans.
CRAVE: What is the process like for selecting singles for the album?
LEANNA: For this album, though it was quite hard to pick, the singles were decided by my repeat listens. I am the person who gets the most sick of my voice and these were the ones I kept coming back to time and time again, and felt as if that was a good marker that my fans would too.
CRAVE: While breakups and relationships feature heavily in The Answer, there are tracks about your self image and your relationship with your father. Do you find these topics harder to write about? Do they take more emotional bandwidth to create?
LEANNA: I actually feel as if those songs, so specific and personal to me, are much easier to create. Although, yes, they do take more emotional bandwidth, they tend to pour up and over out of a well that’s already fully filled. They’re sitting there ready to come out and be explored, rather than me having to mine any old or healed wounds (or in the case of much of The Answer, create an almost entirely fictional narrative out of thin air).
CRAVE: The Answer is great at sandwiching the slower, sadder tracks between the more upbeat, sillier tracks. How do you decide the order of tracks when you have a wide range of emotions throughout your songs?
LEANNA: On some of my other projects, I’ve had a long-running and order-dependent story flowing throughout the run of the album. This time the tracklist was decided upon by me listening to the songs over and over, arranging and rearranging the order in a way that felt best to listen to as the creator. I totally respect and encourage (for this SPECIFIC project) for fans to listen to it in whatever order best makes sense for them. You’re not on a narrative journey, you’re being shown separate but distinct fragments of a mosaic. Whatever picture you want to create with those fragments is up to you!
Through her deep dive into her work, listeners of Leanna Firestone and The Answer should be able to see the love and care that went into this emotionally-charged and superbly fun album.
Make sure to catch Leanna Firestone on the Victory Lap tour starting later this month.
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