Singer-songwriter Julia Michaels released her sophomore EP Inner Monologue Pt I last week and it is something we did not know we needed.

Before her world-wide success following her first single ‘Issues’ culminated with two 2019 Grammy nominations for Song of The Year and Best New Artist, Michaels was behind the scenes collaborating and writing pop successes for popular artists like Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Britney Spears since she was a teenager. She revealed to Glamour in 2017 she stayed in the shadow of song writing for a long time because of anxiety issues and of fear of not being accepted. Luckily for us, giving away songs she thought were too special turned out to be too difficult so that she decided to put herself out there.

‘Anxiety’ is indeed the first title appearing on the EP, its folky pulsing guitar-based sound makes you focus on the lyrics and beautifully transmits how anxiety can really be like, “feel like I’m always apologizing for feeling like I’m out of my mind when I’m doing just fine”. Her voice matches perfectly with featuring Selena’s as we let them tell us a story of extremely relatable feelings.  

With the rockier and slightly more fast paced ‘Deep’ followed by ukulele dream ‘Apple’ she gracefully describes pain and heartbreak and we fantasise with her on the perfect romance.

Collaborations, as a songwriter, make her who she is, the last song on this EP is another clear example of how they amazingly work for her. Featuring Niall Horan, who brought her along on his last European Tour, ‘What a Time’ gives us majorly indie folk vibes and brings us along a reminiscence of good times now simply memories. This six songs collection is a great mixture of indie pop and folky ballads and clearly shows what Michaels’ effortless enjoyable music better represents leaving us thrilled to acknowledge what her future holds and what we assume Inner Monologue Pt. 2 will transport us to.

Giulia Miccio