With her latest album Drama, Nicole Atkins has once again proven her talents far exceed a musician who had to struggle for six years to get it made and released. If not for her friendship with Chris Isaak and his connection to Sun Records, some of the best material of her career probably would not exist.
After decades of top-notch releases met with continual setbacks, the world finally lined up in Atkins’s favor. Not only does Atkins show off her wide-ranging vocals throughout Drama, she does it with wide ranging flavors of music behind them. Atkins and producer Pat Sansone find a perfect flow from 50’s standards to alternative psychedelia throughout the ten songs on the album.
In part two of our interview with Atkins behind the making of Drama, she shares there were twelve songs slated for the release. Real Life and Crying Out Loud did not make the final cut. “We had twelve songs. To make it sound good on vinyl, we had to lose two of them. That was two months of work. We tried to get them so they’re on the digital and cd release. Those two songs could have been singles. They’re such good songs. We’ve played them live but as far as a concept album goes, those two songs didn’t fit in the story. They exist. Maybe they’ll be released for record store day or something.”
As mentioned in part one, Atkins channeled her journey out of an antidepressant haze for a lot of the material in Drama. Another source is the relationship with her husband Ryan McHugh. McHugh is a tour manager forced to spend chunks of time on the road away from Atkins. She shares how McHugh’s thoughtfulness during an ice storm led to the song Curtain Call. A stunning duet between her and Davey Horne. “He was headed to the UK and was on the phone with his mom. I’m always in love with my husband, but you fall in and out of, Oh my god, I’m in LOVE with him. He told his mom I don’t want to leave Nicole home alone with no power. She’s making a record and it’s so stressful for her. Everything worked out and he ended up giving me a gift. He got Davey a plane ticket so he could come over and be on the record. All these weird and shitty things happened, but ultimately good came from them. The best things in my life have come out of horrible situations.”
Finding the right balance in a marriage is hard enough. Extra hard when the participants are a musician and a tour manager. The constant tug of war between Atkins and the music industry has also impacted the family dynamic between her and McHugh. “It’s a journey. Not a typical marriage or home life. We thought, should we have kids? We could, but who is going to stay home and raise them? I work on the road, but he’s making more money right now so it’s like dammit. It’s hard. You have your favorite person in the world. The one person who makes you feel your true self. But you have to be apart for long stretches of time to be with them. That’s been a journey. My goal was to headline Glastonbury. Now it’s I want to make enough money where my husband can work for us.”
Although the relationship with her husband is on solid footing, previous relationships (and their aftermath) have been a common theme for Atkins since her 2007 debut Neptune City. She shares her process for creating the music and the words to go with it. “It’s how the song presents itself, but each song always starts with a melody and a vocal. I don’t play the guitar and say it must be like this. The melody comes into my head first. I want all my songs to be this emotional journey where’s it’s not a rock song or a cinematic indie rock song. I want it to have a grand diva, Liza Minelli or Barbara Streisand element to it. So, I can tell good jokes between the songs.”
Atkins continues, “All the songs that sound sad or mean, they’re all about one ex who I’m friends with now. I tell him, you’re the giving tree of sadness. I don’t have to be in a bad relationship to remember how I felt back then. I can access that feeling. I can compartmentalize. They’re never mean. I always talk about my life on these records. They’re semiautobiographical. I’m also a sounding board for all my friend’s bullshit. That is also going to make it into a song. All their Tinder dating experiences. I’m like, who are these guys?”
Along with the ten songs created for Drama, Atkins was also tasked with creating videos for Trippin’ on Teardrops, Singing in the Mirror, and When the Night Falls. While Sun did give Atkins videographer/editor Caleb Herring to work with, the very limited budget forced her to be extra creative and stretch her resources to their limits. “I have not enjoyed making the videos. It’s been so stressful. There’s no budget. Caleb is a real camera guy. He knows how to move and cut. I’m an illustrator and a painter as well. I get to use all of that to make the videos. I’m really good at making something with no money. The videos look expensive.”
For When the Night Falls, Sun rented Atkins a subway train in the middle of the woods for the shoot. Atkins explains how she turned that into a ruby slipper wearing Dororthy morphed into A Clockwork Orange style video featuring faceless red men. “I made a joke to Sun. I’m from Jersey and the only train I’m getting on is the New Jersey transit train. Incredibly, they found one in the middle of the woods to rent. Two days before the video, I saw the red faces and the trenchcoats. I was watching old horror movies. I thought of The Wiz and Dorothy on the subway. I made a storyboard with full animations. This is how people walk in, and then I sit down. I choreographed everybody while I was lip synching. It was insane. I was showing the red dudes the moves. I said, ‘I’m going to stomp my foot. On the fourth one, turn left.’ I’m lip synching while banging my foot and everyone’s doing it. And it worked.”
“The Trippin’ on Teardrops video we shot on the same day as the Singing in the Mirror video. They look like two totally different videos in two different places. They were shot in the same day. The price tag was $900. You don’t know what it’s going to look like or be like. You have these pillars of what you’re into. You want to be in that world. Here’s a bowl of bananas. That’s what you have to make your next video with. That really makes my brain work fast. You don’t know what you can do until you try it.”
It’s impossible to predict what the future holds for Nicole Atkins. If it’s based on her abundant artistic abilities, it should be smooth. Given the unnecessary hurdles she’s faced, it’s not based on that. Atkins has enough experience to know just because she can make an album, doesn’t mean she has to. The motivation and material behind it must be aligned. She concludes. “It costs money to make the records I want to make. I also think you don’t have to spend a jillion dollars to make a great record. You need solid ideas and arrangements. Since I was a kid, if I found music that moved me, I would always cry. My parents always asked what’s wrong? I was like, I don’t know. I wondered why I kept crying when I didn’t stub my toe. That’s always how it’s been. That’s why I make the music I make. I only want to make songs that have big emotions in them. If they don’t, I can’t sing them. I don’t sing in the shower. I don’t walk around singing all day. I sing when I need to let some fucking feelings out.”
Nicole Atkins – Drama
2026 Sun Records