Today we’d like to introduce you to Audra Phillips.
Hi Audra, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember. My mom said at one point, she noticed that I would “sing-cry,” and from that point on she knew I’d be a drama queen and a singing drama queen at that. The first performance memory I can think of was when I was in kindergarten, and I sang “In My Own Little Corner” from Cinderella at the school talent show.
From that point on, I knew I wanted to make music professionally one day. I got really into musical theatre in middle and high school as well, so most of my life revolved around chorus and theatre as I got older. Although I’d been writing music, practically since I could write, I was always told that I needed to choose a more stable career path, so I had decided on pursuing a degree in music education after graduating and had taken an internship working with the middle school chorus department in my junior year of high school.
I loved doing that and assisting with high school chorus classes, but I really couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to be creating music. Honestly, it just didn’t seem like my path, so I ended up trying lots of stuff after high school from beauty to bartending. I had all these songs, and I was so afraid of what would happen if I released them. I thought “the majority of the people who will listen to this are people who USED to know me, and they’re going to think I’m weird,” which I totally am, so like, big deal.
As soon as I released my first EP though, I noticed that I felt so much freer than I did before, and I really didn’t care what anyone else thought. I was just happy to share it with the world, and I actually had a lot of people DM me those first few weeks to tell me that my lyrics had made them feel seen, which is literally the best feedback I could receive.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road to where I’m at now has been rocky, to say the least. I started struggling with bulimia, anxiety, and depression when I was in middle school and began seeing a therapist at 15. No one would’ve ever known I was struggling because I always tried to project a positive and outgoing attitude, but underneath the mask, I was really struggling to want to stay alive.
Because of this hatred I had for myself, I ended up with a lot of people who mistreated me, and I dealt with sexual trauma at a pretty young age. The only thing that brought me solace was music and songwriting, so even though I was going through a really dark time, I was able to make something out of it that I could reflect on later down the road. I hadn’t even realized the gravity of the situations I was dealing with until a few years later.
I had stopped seeing my therapist before anything had happened because I started to think I could do it on my own, and I didn’t want to tell anyone what had happened. However, I was dealing with some pretty intense PTSD, so I eventually went back and also asked to get screened because I wanted a formal diagnosis to explain how what I had been dealing with prior to the trauma was informing the way my body responded to the trauma.
I ended up getting diagnosed with manic bipolar, generalized anxiety disorder, and PTSD when was 20 years old, and this really changed things for me because I could finally develop a good treatment that was tailored to those issues.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a musician/singer-songwriter from the Atlanta area who grew up singing and writing songs on the piano as well as performing at recitals and theatre productions. I released my first EP in October, and if you listen to the lyrics, there’s a huge theme around mental health and how it affects the way you interact with yourself and others.
I wrote a song called ‘addicted’ that sounds like a love song, and I usually describe it that way because it’s easier than explaining that it’s really just a song to mock the fact that I still struggle to tell the difference between love and infatuation when dealing with mania.
I also wrote the song ‘NEVER BEEN SANE’ to describe the anxious thoughts, flashbacks, and nightmares I was having when I first started processing trauma, and my song, ‘What I’ve Been Told,’ about the intense insecurity I felt due to my anxiety disorder in middle and high school. These two were the hardest songs to release because I felt so vulnerable admitting what I’d written in them, but I’m really proud of myself for sharing them because a lot of people messaged me saying they related to them.
I’ve always been really open and vulnerable with people who know me, but doing that with anyone who happens to find you on the internet is a little intimidating. I kind of started to love it after that though, and I’ve recently been on a podcast (which I’ll share on my Instagram once I have the release date) where I talk about my mental health journey and how my music is influenced by it.
Music and mental health have been huge parts of my life for so long, and I’m really just now starting to share those parts of my life with the people who engage with me and my work. It just makes me really happy to know that I’m being 100% honest with who I am now, and that never would have happened if I hadn’t released any music.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
Honestly, there are so many people I could thank for helping me become the musician and person I want to be, but I definitely want to thank my high school chorus teacher, Mrs. Mavis, for helping me shape my voice, and I also want to thank Mr. Bassett, who mentored me while I did an internship with his chorus class at the middle school.
They were both extremely instrumental in helping me lay a solid foundation to build upon, and I also had a piano/voice teacher named Mrs. Masters who helped me become a lot more creative with my instrumentals. My family also encouraged me to keep practicing music growing up, which I’m really thankful for because not everyone has a musical family to keep them motivated, even if only by jealousy when hearing one of my older siblings play something cool.
I actually did take a short break from music at one point though, and when I shared my first post with an original, a guy named Sean Bart heard it and decided he wanted to produce for me. We became fast friends and worked on a project, but he passed away very suddenly. This was really hard because he was not only my friend but also the first producer I’d worked with and the first person to make me feel like I was good enough to pursue a career as an artist.
After he passed, I couldn’t write for a few months, but it was his voice in my head telling me that I needed to finish something and get it out there, so I did. I reached out to my friend, Josh Hyndshaw, who was my right-hand man when I worked on my EP. Having him there to help was so essential because I knew very little about music production since I’d only done live performances.
I also don’t play guitar, so I let him take the reigns on that (listen to the bridge of “NEVER BEEN SANE” to hear how incredible he is, seriously). Lastly, I’m just super grateful to my best friends for supporting me always and offering feedback when I ask for it. I won’t name them because they’d hate that, but you guys know who you are.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://open.spotify.com/artist/64rR2odrbh5qhwWn6JDjRs
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/audlyreal/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXkrLJOeKexrTbWGNausfIg
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-777540189?ref=clipboard&p=i&c=1&si=593187BFCEB34EEAB81D8112028D528F&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
- Other: https://music.apple.com/artist/1590071175
