Your Smith on Motherhood, Music, and Making New Album ‘The Rub’

I first heard Caroline Smith through “Let ’Em Say,” her super fun 2014 collaboration with Lizzo—and it was actually my first time hearing Lizzo, too. Soon after, I fell hard for Half of Being a Woman, which remains one of my favorite albums. In February 2020, I caught her show at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia—unknowingly my last concert before Covid. Now, five years and a name change later, she returns as Your Smith with The Rub, out tomorrow, September 12. I had the pleasure of asking her a few questions about her life over the past few years and the making of this new record.

I first discovered you as Caroline Smith through your song with Lizzo, and Half of Being a Woman is still one of my favorite albums ever. What made you ready to step into Your Smith, and how has that shaped your music today?

I had been creating music under my real name, Caroline Smith, since I was 16-years-old. At 30, when I started releasing music as Your Smith, I really thought I deserved a fresh Google search that didn’t include a lot of the harrowing decisions I’d made tracing all the way back to my MySpace days. Your Smith also introduced a new sound that felt more effortless for me to achieve, it felt more like Caroline without the different attempts at searching for who I should/could be. These days, I’m happy I started anew with Your Smith and I just try to remind myself to stay true to who I actually am or I’m going to end up right back where I started with a very messy Google search loaded with face-palm fashion choices and otherwise.

Your last release was Wild Wild Woman in 2019. How does it feel to return with The Rub?

Wild Wild Woman was an EP, so it’s actually been since Half About Being a Woman came out in 2013 that I’ve released a bonafide full-length. And you know what, it doesn’t feel too crazy, it just feels really good. I remember finishing HABW and it felt so loaded and heavy and stressful, but I was much younger then (25! A baby!) and now I have a different outlook on art and how it really is just a slog like any other 9-5. You sit down; You write; It’s bad; You move on; It’s good; You release it; You sit down; You write; so on and so forth. It really takes all of the ego-related stress out of it.

You worked with Jake Luppen and Nathan Stocker on this record. How did those collaborations come together, and what was it like making music with them?

I actually sent Jake an instagram message after I moved back to MN and had no music friends left here. My little sister who grew up listening to Hippo Campus urged me to cold-DM him, absolutely singing his praises as an artist and songwriter and I generally trust her taste in music and art so I gave it a try, fully expecting to not get a response because he’s pretty fuckin’ famous. But as luck would have it, he had actually been a fan of mine! So we immediately started writing together and it just flowed so naturally. He pulled Nathan into our collaboration as well and the two of them just really gave my music a new home. I must add that not only are those two guys exceptional people, the whole Hippo Campus band is really something else – gracious, polite, supportive, kind. 

Since getting married and becoming a parent, how have those experiences changed your creative process?

Oh man, it has changed my process tremendously. I think most notably is how un-precious I am about my career and art now. I used to really fight the urge to lace my whole self into my career or how I faired as an artist. But now, me as an artist is just a piece of a much larger pie chart of who I am or what’s important to me. Which I believe is really as it should be which is MUCH easier said than done when your entire life is your art. Having a baby really snaps you out of it because you really get booted from being the focal point when you have a toddler falling to pieces because you cut his toast the wrong way.

On Instagram you’re funny, honest, and real—you share your life and your family (I especially love the video of you teaching your child piano!) How does that voice connect to your music?

Thank you! I appreciate hearing that. I think it falls in line with the ethos that I’m just going to be my most authentic self, not for some pious holier-than-thou reason, but because I simply don’t have the where-with-all to curate something or present a social persona with even a modicum more polish. Being the roughly hewn version of myself allows me to actually interact with social media at all, otherwise I just would not have the capacity. So it’s kinda all or nothing with me when it comes to social media, so to speak.

With 13 tracks on The Rub, is there one that feels like the heart of the album or one you can’t wait to play live?

This is a great question and it’s so hard to answer. They all feel like equal pieces to the bigger picture that makes up the entire album. My favorite song to play live off of the new album currently is Peaches because it means the most to me lyrically. 

“Little Highways” feels especially intimate. How did that song take shape?

I wrote that song when I found out I was pregnant. I walked into the studio, told Jake and Nate who immediately leapt form the chairs and tackled me so happy and excited, and we just started thrumming out that key part. The song isn’t about the joy of pregnancy, it’s a bit more about the grief you feel for life as you know it, for the life that comes before the portal way that is a one-way entrance into a completely new life. Of course pregnancy is a gift (in our case) but man it’s really complicated.

Why did you choose The Rub as the title for the album?

The Rubis shorted from the Shakespearian idiom “Therein lies the rub.” Like, ah there’s the catch. There’s the rub. To me it captures trying to hold two equally cumbersome things at the same time—being a mother and being an artist. The two can sometimes (most times) be the crux of the other. They are often two dissonant notes “rubbing” together. And despite it, the album was somehow forged to completion. It felt like nothing short of a miracle. Now, as I embark on a tour this fall, especially an artist that is not big enough to be able to afford a bus, being able to go out for a month with a 3 year old at home feels nearly impossible. You see, I am fortunate enough to continue to have a career and be able to play amazing rooms but, alas, I have a 3-year-old that needs me. And therein lies the rub.

A Shakespeare reference, I love it! Your Smith’s answers offer a vivid glimpse into the balance between art and everyday life that runs through The Rub. The album radiates that hard-won perspective—messy, joyful, and full of heart. I can’t wait to hear the rest of the songs on the album and hopefully see Your Smith perform the next time she comes to New York.

The Rub drops at 12 AM EST.