Cassadee Pope On Finally Giving Up On Country Music For Punk

Cassadee Pope recently sat down with Rock Sound for an interview, discussing her choice to embrace punk music once more after an extended period in the country music scene.

The former Hey Monday vocalist, after producing three country albums over the course of a decade, made the decision to revisit the pop-punk genre in 2022. The transition started with her collaboration with Levi Hummon on the track ‘RSVP’ the same year, with Pope delving into her motives and future aspirations in subsequent interviews.

In fact, through a recent conversation, she expressed that, while proud of her country-oriented work, she felt a pullback towards rock music in recent years. Attempting to merge her punk roots with country sounds in her 2021 album, ‘Thrive,’ the musician found that it didn’t meet her expectations, leading her to gravitate back to rock.

She revealed that her continued dedication to country music was driven by her reluctance to disregard the time and effort she had poured into it. With pride in her achievements and anxiety about losing what she had built, Pope held on to country music. Eventually, she let go of her fears and started creating the music she truly desired, no longer holding back her artistic impulses.

In the interview, she shared:

“I found myself kind of inching toward this [rock] the past couple of years. I had an album come out in 2021 called ‘Thrive,’ and I wanted to incorporate my pop-punk roots with country music. While I’m really proud of that record, it didn’t quite translate, and it didn’t land the way I wanted it to. And I just really – I started thinking about it, my heart wanted to go back to rock music.

I was keeping that foot in country music because I had spent 10 years in this town in Nashville, just working really hard and having some success. I’m very proud of that, but I think I just wouldn’t let myself fully go where my heart was wanting me to go because I was afraid of letting go of something I’d worked so hard towards for 10 years. So, once I kinda let go of that fear, I started writing the kind of music that I had sort of suppressed for so long.

Pope unveiled her latest pop-punk single, ‘People That I Love Leave,’ in early April, a clear indication of her return to her original genre. The song’s fresh sound is complemented by a lively lyric video on YouTube, reflecting her renewed commitment to her musical roots.