Caroline Kingsbury wrote “Heaven’s just a flight” shortly before her brother passed away of cancer in 2019. The song is “surprisingly upbeat” said Kingsbury, to help her remember him when she performs. The Florida native follows up her recent single ‘Kissing someone else,’ as her new album _Heaven’s Just a Flight_ comes out today, April 16th.
The debut album is the first release from Fortune Tellers, the label founded by Peter Matthew Bauer of the Walkmen. Kingsbury hopes this album represents an honest retelling of her life—born out of her experiences, insecurities, and self-discovery. When showing the album to her family, she warned them about ignoring some of what they were going to hear in her lyrics.
_Flaunt_ got the chance to talk to her about her debut album, the new single, and her adventures on the road.
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**What was the start of your musical journey?**
In middle school, I started taking guitar lessons, and then I stopped, because I knew from very early on that I was really only interested in the performing and the songwriting side and not so much in the musicality. I just wanted to get to the part where I could sing, write, and perform.
**What styles of music influenced you early on?**
When I was starting out, folk music was a very big thing and there was this band The Head and the Heart, and they were one of my favorite bands. Everyone was listening to The Lumineers and wearing suspenders and being like, ‘I do folk music now’. That kind of continued in college, but then I dropped out. My genre changed once I started having my mental health problems.
**How was your first tour?**
The other tour was with Alex Lahey. And I actually met my girlfriend there, who I now live with and have three cats. She was the guitarist for Lahey, and I was the opener. And we fell in love, it was really special.
**How do you about your new single ‘Kissing someone else’ coming out?**
I can't believe it's coming out, because I've been waiting so long. And when I wrote the song, I was like, ‘Oh, shit this is good.’ I was going through a breakup when I wrote it, it was my first really big breakup. And I was also exploring my sexuality and going out with a lot of people, and I was just being more open about my sexuality too, and also reflecting on the fact that I knew that my ex was doing the same thing. So the song lyrics are very simple. I can feel your heartbeat while you're someone else.
I think I was just going through the whole process of discovering my own sexuality and I went into the song wanting to write like a Madonna pop song. I had never written anything like it before. And it really opened my eyes to what I could do.
**What about the music video!**
We filmed it on a green screen and on a green screen treadmill. We filmed it during COVID so we had to keep it small but it turned out so cool!
**Tell me about the album!**
The album is called _Heaven’s Just a Flight_, and it's named after a song that I wrote actually, at the end of the writing process of the album. My brother passed away from brain cancer in 2019 and it was right after I got home from my first tour, I was opening for an artist and I came home and basically found out that my brother was gonna die. And that was when I wrote, ‘Heaven’s Just a Flight.’ We just knew that it was the end. And I wanted to write a song that I could show him and that I could play on stage for the rest of my life and think about him. The song is super upbeat. It's literally gonna be the jumping moment in the show. Because my brother would have loved that, and I showed him before he passed away and it was just my connection to him. I spent the last three and a half years writing this album, and then all of a sudden my brother dies at the end of my first tour when I’m just getting started. It really changed the whole process of making the album and releasing it.
**Your music is so personal. Has it helped you to come to terms with your own experiences?**
It's definitely kind of like a diary. But I just remember the person I was when I wrote it, we all change so much. I’m in my early 20s and we change so much so fast. So I feel like they're markers of periods of time.
**What is your biggest takeaway from the process of making your album?**
The biggest thing that I learned is that even if something isn't perfect, it's still enough. So when I was deciding if I was going to make an album or not, I was really weighing it, going between: is this good enough or not? It doesn't have to be done perfectly or sound perfect to be worthy. Sometimes it makes it better that it's not. And that applies to, like, I think we all feel like we have to have the perfect body to be wearing a bathing suit and things like that. I'm just constantly battling those things in my mind. Because the images are everywhere. So you don't have to be perfect to be worthy.
