About

Natural, easy, engaged, there’s both her self-examination and celebration of self-flowing though these 12 songs. An invitation to feel, touch and even seek and find carnal pleasure, Kate Hudson understands the phases and stages of modern music in a way that’s fluid, but defined, honest, yet willing to leave it all at the door in the name of love.

Kate Hudson’s not sure what took her so long, especially with all the music whirling inside her. Raised between Colorado’s mountains and Santa Monica and Malibu’s beaches, she came of age with radio that delivered everything from Pearl Jam to Pharcyde, Neil Young to De La Soul. And so many women -- from Billie Holliday, Etta James and Joni Mitchell to Alanis Morrisette, Madonna, Patty Griffin, and Chrissie Hynde– who captured all the emotions a teenager feels.

That hunger for musical expression from the woman who embodied the ultimate rocker’s muse in Cameron Crowe’s Oscar-winning Almost Famous ran deeper than most people would imagine. She admits, “I’ve been writing music since I was a young girl. I always felt connected to music. Since I was very little, I wrote songs, and little poems and lyrics that came to me, even though the house I grew up in was more of a theater house than a musical house.”

Well, when you’ve been lucky to have a career like I’ve had, been around the musicians in my life, and you take your songs seriously, it’s tricky.”

Regardless, she kept writing, living in the music. Never sure what to do with it, never sure how it fit into her busy, successful life. Music was just always, always there; “It was my outlet. It was always the place I found.”

When something burns inside you like that, it’s only a matter of time. A rock & roll soul, look at the relationships she’s chosen, the lineage she comes from, even the free-spirited nature that defines every aspect of how she faces her work, her life, her creativity, and her passions.

“There were always songs, on the radio or in my home. There was always a piano, just like there were always musicians around. I’ve lived on the road, on tour, feeling that rush. And those songs in my head? Well, when you’ve been lucky to have a career like I’ve had, been around the musicians in my life, and you take your songs seriously, it’s tricky.”

Then came Linda Perry, who challenged Hudson. Not to finish what was, but to create from scratch; heated, fertile writing sessions where two, sometimes three songs a day tumbled out until – ultimately -- 26 songs emerged from two weeks of focused songwriting.

“Why did I wait so long?” she wonders. “I’ve done this in pieces for so long, hundreds of songs or recordings. Bits and ideas, scraps of music. But this? This was me in the process. Instead of witnessing, I was creating, striving, delivering these songs. What makes music transformative is that it’s so in-the-moment, so present. Even when it’s your song, people can draw their own conclusions and find their own lives in it.”

Hudson pauses, collects her thoughts, and explains, “A lot of these songs became big chorus, very cinematic things. Even the quiet songs, the piano ballads, have a dynamic that surprised me. Because I love so many kinds of music, I gave myself permission to not struggle with labels or defining myself. That shuts down the creativity. I wanted this to be all the things I love.”

Shimmering in places, lacerating in others, the music is a survey course that explores the intersection of modern rock and pop. But the voice, strong and swooping, incandescent and soft, seems familiar, even knowing. A fluid vocalist, committed to getting to the songs’ core, Hudson hungers for honest connection and healing. That will to find the space that is as transparent and real as humanly possible drives her as a singer and a songwriter.

Whether the techno disco of “Talk About Love,” with its washes of synthesizers and percolating drum machines, or the intimately vulnerable “Love Ain’t Easy,” tender vocal invitation over falling upright piano notes and the hesitant, slightly hushed “Touch The Light” that dissolves into a moaning cascades of  “whoa-ohhhhh” and electric guitar runs, this is the portrait of a woman who’s never lost her innocence or thrill for living wide open.

It ripples through “The Nineties,” with a teasing vocal over a push-me/pull-you arrangement that’s spare, lush, spare again. It erupts on the new wave pogo-licious “Romeo.” It oozes and saunters on “Never Made A Moment,” equal parts Laurel Canyon pop and Pacific Coast Highway rock.

Natural, easy, engaged, there’s both self-examination and celebration of self-flowing though these 12 songs. An invitation to feel, touch and even seek and find carnal pleasure, Kate Hudson understands the phases and stages of modern music in a way that’s fluid, but defined, honest, yet willing to leave it all at the door in the name of love.