Meet the ACL Artist: Siena Liggins on her inspiration, art and performance
Atlanta-based musician Siena Liggins is bringing her lively, infectious brand of pop music to Austin City Limits. Her debut visual album, “Ms. Out Tonight,” explores romance and the balance between masculine and feminine themes, drawing inspiration from real life and visual art.
When she was a child, music provided Liggins with a sense of identity at school as she alternated living with her mother and father.
“I decided I wanted to do music when I was in my early teens,” Liggins said. “I moved around a lot as a kid … The whole reason I even kept pursuing [music] was because people remembered me by it. It made me popular at school, or just gave me a group of friends who hyped me up.”
Liggins’ music has been described as “songs you love to hate,” and she revels in that idea.
“I love the idea of writing songs that initially you fall in love with, and then you have this period of time where you can’t get out of your head and then it’s super polarizing,” Liggins said. “Then you have this moment where you’re like, ‘I actually love it.’ I wanted to get better at writing songs that people couldn’t get enough of.”
Liggins said her biggest musical influence are her lived experiences. With “Ms. Out Tonight,” she wrote entire stanzas or verses by pulling from real conversations and text messages.
“I wrote my first song called ‘Flowerbomb’ about the smell of my pillow the day after a girl I had a huge crush on had left, and it’s literally just about the fragrance that she was wearing,” Liggins said. “Sometimes I get nervous about if the girl I wrote it about ever heard it. I sent it to her after I released it, but she never got back to me.”
Along with her music, Liggins is fully immersed in the album’s art and marketing, drawing from visual artists, stylists, designers and photographers she admires. She says that while making an album is chaotic, she loved to see it come together.
“That’s my favorite part of the process — the mood-boarding and cutting up magazines,” Liggins said. “I’m very aware of the fact that I’m not the best visual artist out there, but with every little project I do, I get better. At the end of the day, I have good taste, and nobody’s ever gonna be able to take that away from me.”
Liggins, who is set to perform at ACL Oct. 16, says that the nerves she feels from her upcoming performance only serve as motivation.
“It’s wild, because I’m not a festival girlie,” Liggins said. “For a little while I was like, ‘Should I be more nervous about this than I am?’ Now it’s getting closer and closer, and I’m freaking out … All the months and weeks of preparation pay off, and in the moment you’re allowed to just let go and completely surrender to the crowd and to the music. I feel like it’s been months of me holding my breath, and I’m ready to release.”
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