As far as the lyrics go, “There are definitely some personal
stories in there, and then there are stories that’ve been
inspired by other people. I like keeping that a mystery,
because I feel protected by that, by not sharing which ones
are personal, which ones aren’t.” However, she admits,
“I’m sure if people think hard enough, they can guess.”
“When I was challenging
myself to make songs
more accessible to people,
it wound up being positive,
coming out better.”
Mendler definitely thinks about her fans when she’s writing
her lyrics. In high school, she used to have a problem
communicating what she was thinking when writing stories
in English class. “It would make sense to me in my head, but
no one else would know what I was talking about. I never
got good at that. So with songwriting, I have to consciously
think, ‘Does this story make sense?’”
She goes on to say, “There’s something cool about being
obscure sometimes, but I think that the smartest lyrics are
the ones that can be understood.” And to us, that makes
total sense.
52 ragged // raggedmag.com