A Song For Friday: Faye Webster
The enigmatic Atlantan continues building an unimpeachable career
I’m racking my brain, trying to figure out how I first got into Faye Webster. I know it wasn’t through TikTok, where she apparently soundtracks enough posts with enough views that they’ve pumped up the streaming numbers on some songs into the multi-millions. Even if she has nothing to do with that - and lacks her own TikTok account - I say good for her. But somehow in 2019 I came across her third album, Atlanta Millionaires Club (maybe it was the deeply weird cover photo), and was quite taken with her dreamy melodies, wry humor, and burgeoning mastery of country-soul, tight pop, and modern R&B. When I included the album in the Best Of 2019: Rock, Folk, Etc., the log-line I arrived at was, “Ultra-modern countrypolitan stylings from a young woman who could be Natalie Prass's little sister.”
In 2021, she returned even stronger with I Know I’m Funny haha, which hit #17 on my Top 25 based on my feeling that “By leaning further into to her country-soul inclinations she also seems ever closer to her genuine self.”
Now, she has released the absolutely addictive Underdressed At The Symphony, which finds her and her regular collaborator Drew Vandenberg both smoothing out her sound further, leaning into lounginess, and pumping up the drama. After the thrill of hearing her sing with a live orchestra on 2022’s brilliant Car Therapy EP, it’s even more delightful to hear the strings and a bombastic piano nearly turn the title track into a miniature radio play, just one great moment among many. But the song I want to feature is the album’s eighth track, eBay Purchase History.
The song’s repetitive structure, in which the acoustic guitar, sparkling keyboard, and ticking drums are joined by flutes and a guiro, is utterly beguiling, almost concealing the deadpan, relatable, and melancholy lyrics. Beginning with the perfect couplet “You should see my eBay purchase history/You could learn a lot about me,” Webster reveals how to use rhythm and humor to provide distance from emotion. And the final verse, sung in that kittenish near-whisper, seems to tell a deeper story in telegraphic strokes:
“I've been listening to the same thing again
Close my eyes, I can smell my old apartment
It's kinda nice to have familiarity
A sweet escape for whenever I need
There’s no shortage of “sweet escape” on Underdressed At The Symphony, which also includes the wonderfully oddball Lego Ring, featuring Webster’s middle-school friend Lil Yachty, and Lifetime, a sumptuous ballad which may just be the slow-dance song of the year.
If you’re still unfamiliar, start here or with either of the two previous albums. With each subsequent release, Faye Webster has proved she’s in it for the long haul and if the TikTok-ers vanish from whence they came, I’ll still be listening.
From the archives:
Best Of 2022: Rock, Folk, Etc.
Best Of 2021: The Top 25
Best Of 2019: Rock, Folk, Etc.