One night several years ago, Taylor Momsen’s father took his daughter to a White Stripes show. “Before that, the only concert I’d been to was Britney Spears,” says the singer, songwriter, and guitarist. “But once I saw Jack White onstage, that was it. I grew up as a dancer and I thought you had to dance to be a girl in the music industry. Then I saw the White Stripes and I was like, ‘No, you don’t. I can do that.’” Momsen was nine.
Jack White’s raw power and deceptively simple guitar-and-vocal attack proved to be highly influential on the now 16-year-old Momsen, who began humming melodies before she could talk and writing songs at the age of five after falling in love with The Beatles. “I was obsessed with them,” she says. “I also loved Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd, Audioslave, Soundgarden, Oasis, and Nirvana. That’s what I listened to. My rock idols are all men.” The songs, all written by Momsen and Ben Phillips with their producer Kato Khandwala, run the gamut of emotions, alternating at times between seething rage and a bruised vulnerability. The songs tackle everything from romantic insecurity (the full-throttle rager “Make Me Wanna Die,” which also appears on the soundtrack to the film Kick-Ass), to despair (“You”), to how working non-stop can you make you feel like one of the un-dead (“Zombie”). Momsen pushes back against the haters on “Light Me Up” and asks how far you have to go to get forgiveness on “Going Down.” With her growly, world-weary alto, Momsen can do it all: garage-rock rave-ups (“Miss Nothing”), punchy blues-rock stompers (“My Medicine,” “Since You’re Gone”), as well as emotional power ballads (“Just Tonight”) and lovely acoustic guitar and string-driven numbers (“You”). <3
