{"id":210,"date":"2012-03-17T15:12:49","date_gmt":"2012-03-17T15:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/apsaramusic.com\/?p=210"},"modified":"2023-04-30T16:56:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-30T16:56:05","slug":"breakdown-of-a-breakup-terry-radigan-shares-one-of-lifes-toughest-experiences-through-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apsaramusic.com\/?p=210","title":{"rendered":"BREAKDOWN OF A BREAKUP: TERRY RADIGAN SHARE’S ONE OF LIFE’S TOUGHEST EXPERIENCES THROUGH MUSIC"},"content":{"rendered":"

When her 20-year relationship broke off abruptly, singer-songwriter-producer Terry Radigan<\/a>\u00a0felt like she’d been knocked off a bicycle. Dazed, she took a year to rage, cry, and regain her balance, and to begin to heal through writing songs about the experience.<\/em><\/p>\n

Although she didn’t initially intend to make an album about the end of her relationship, a friend and fellow producer persuaded Radigan to reconsider. The result is the recent album The<\/em> Breakdown of a Breakup<\/em> (Catherine the Great Music, Feb. 2012).<\/p>\n

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Terry Radigan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Radigan is known for her work with Nashville stars like Patty Loveless and Trisha Yearwood, but her own music doesn’t belong to any specific genre. The Breakdown of a Breakup<\/em> is truly a multi-genre album, ranging from blaring brass-rock on the track “Mistake” to madcap waltz on “Siamese Twin,” and string-ballad on “Beautiful Lie” to alt-country on “The Truth.”<\/p>\n

The Breakdown of a Breakup<\/em> is a gift to anyone who’s ever gone through a breakup or experienced a major life change. With clarity, honesty, and an occasional dash of humor, Radigan opens her heart up to listeners.<\/p>\n

She recently spoke with Apsara<\/em> about the ups and downs of finding her way again, and about the process of putting the experience into music.<\/p>\n

The songs on the album take listeners through a very natural progression of emotions. How did you go about putting the album together?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I ended up taking a couple of months just to get my feet back under me. The joke my songwriter friends and I have is that even if this kind of thing happens, we know we’ll get songs out of it.<\/p>\n

It took a while to take everything in, and then I started writing some of the songs. I wrote most of them close to the order they are on the album, but I didn’t have a thought at all about making a record out of them.<\/p>\n

David Barratt is another musician and producer who I work with. A year ago, he asked, “When’s your next record?” I said, “I don’t know, and I don’t really know what I want it to sound like.” He said, “You’ve been writing a bunch of songs\u2014why do you feel like you don’t have one already?”<\/p>\n

I thought about it, and about a week went by before I called him and asked if he wanted to be my executive producer. Once we sat down to put the songs together, I saw there was a really clear storyline. It wasn’t so much about two people meeting, but about how you feel in the aftermath of a breakup.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>It isn’t really possible to pin a single genre label to this album<\/strong>\u2014there are all sorts of styles of music and instruments on it. How did you decide what type of music to use for each song?
\n<\/strong>
\nIt just flowed\u2014that was the most liberating part of this album. The mood of each song laid out so clearly what the track would be. The only thing a song had to do during production was to back up what the emotion was.<\/p>\n

What was the experience like while you were writing the songs?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I almost felt like I was writing a letter to myself. When I was writing “Beautiful Lie,” it was like I was writing to myself, saying, “This is what’s happened, and this is how you were feeling.”<\/p>\n

I’d been writing “Beautiful Lie” throughout the course of a day, and I remember I took a break in the evening to go to a music place just a few blocks from my house. It’s a tiny little club, and in the backroom there was a string quartet playing. Strings just kill me, and they especially killed me that night. Then I walked back, and finished writing around 2:00 a.m.<\/p>\n

“Beautiful Lie”<\/strong><\/p>\n