Garrett Clark Borns, the singer/songwriter known as BØRNS, is sitting on Zoom in his Los Angeles home, where he’s been living for the past 10 years. It’s fall, and though there’s a slight drop in temperature there, it’s not the same as the Midwest, where he grew up—the leaves changing colors and the kind of chilliness where you can see your breath in front of you. He misses that.
Behind him is an AB Chase baby grand piano built in the 1890s, the same one that’s featured on his new single “Letting Myself Go”, which released today.
“I’m holding onto it for a friend who had it in storage,” he says. “So it was either just sitting in a dark space in a couple of pieces or I’m able to pull some songs out of it.”
BØRNS got his start in 2012 as a guitarist and drummer in the Garrett Borns Trio, releasing his first EP, A Dream Between, featuring the single “Mitten.” After leaving the band to become a solo artist and changing his stage name, he signed with Interscope Records and released his debut single “10,000 Emerald Pools” off his EP Candy in 2014. However, it was his single “Electric Love” off his first studio album, 2015’s Dopamine that helped him gain mainstream popularity.
After releasing his 2018 album, Blue Madonna, BØRNS took a break from music, reemerging in 2023 with his EP Suddenly.
In his more than decade-long career, he’s shared the stage with Lana Del Rey, Bleachers, The Lumineers, Halsey, and others.
Now BØRNS is back again with an ode to the musicians he grew up listening to—Elton John and the Beach Boys, among others. “Letting Myself Go” feels nostalgic yet modern, intimate yet epic. It’s a song he feels passionate about, I learn, as he talks with me about its creation.
What was the Impetus for “Letting Myself Go”?
I was working on writing the songs for an EP that I put out last year called Suddenly. It was kind of a daily ritual of just writing songs at the piano and actually writing them out, taking the time to write them with a pen. And I feel like that kind of slows down the process a little bit. And this song came out. I think that the chords came first, and then that sort of opened up the doorway to this concept of letting myself go. And, I’d always heard that phrase of letting oneself go in a negative sense, kind of like a lack of caring or giving up. I liked that concept because I feel like with that there’s also this opportunity to start something fresh. And just musically, it just felt kind of like this release.
Yeah, because I definitely get that sense from listening to it that there’s this message of healthy rejuvenation. This song has a cinematic feel. I got Freddy Mercury vibes from it. Were you channeling any particular musicians when you were writing it?
“Letting Myself Go” is definitely an ode to a lot of the ’70s-era music that I listened to growing up. And that originally got me excited about just music in the first place, just enjoying music and wanting to try to write songs. There’s Jeff Lynne’s influence—his production—and that cinematic addition with strings. And Elton John and Billy Joel; just that early ’70s era of ballad songwriting. It just feels like there’s so much heart and passion in that era of songs and a lot of the time they were based around a vocal and a piano. There’s something really powerful about that.
I had the opportunity to work with a seasoned arranger who also did the ensemble arrangements for the Suddenly EP I put out last year. And he did a beautiful arrangement with a string quartet on “Letting Myself Go.” We recorded it in this big room, so the strings sound really big. And then we overdubbed some flutes and horns after that. But the actual song from start to finish is actually one take, with a rhythm section. And then we did all the overdubs over top, so it really has this push and pull and the feeling of being in one room with musicians. And my touring drummer, Kristen Gleeson-Prata, played drums on it. And I love how she played on it. She told me afterward that was the most liberating recording session because we didn’t use a click track. And she’s like, ‘I can’t think of the last time as a drummer, I’ve gone to the studio and I haven’t been on a grid.’ And she was like, ‘It was so fun to just find the tempo that felt like it was telling the story of the song.’ It was a very new way of recording for me, too. I’ve never done that for a final recording to put out. So that was a fun experience.
That was going to be my next question. You summed it up pretty well, the experience of playing with a string quartet. What was it like on a personal level, since you had never done it before?
Steve Weisberg, who did the arrangements, brought in some really great players. It was just an exciting experience for me because the records that I made before were just recorded differently…kind of crafting a song as we went along…exploring the sounds of things. So this was more like writing a whole song and rehearsing it with a trio, like a rhythm section. And then going into a studio, hitting record, and playing the song all the way through. Most of the time I never actually played a song all the way through until it was time to tour. So this was like, once the red light was on, all of a sudden I feel like I’m performing. The nerves set in and…we’re all trying to get through this entire song without making a mistake and also trying to bring out the emotion of the song. So it was a whole new kind of experience. And I really liked that. I feel like it almost gave me a little peek into why I grew up loving the songs of the ’70s, because it was a performance in the studio, you know? So, that was an exciting discovery.
This seems like a pretty personal song to write. Was it? Tell me what this song represents about your life.
I think as an independent artist now, I’m making the most personal work that I’ve ever been able to put out. Making past records, there were a lot of opinions around my sound and who I am as an artist. Just being on a major label, there are a lot of people to appease. And now I have a different sense of independence. I’m writing music for me and that feels really good. So it’s a personal message that’s allowed me to find new inspiration. And I hope it can be personal for somebody else who hears it, and it inspires them.
You can hear a difference in “Letting Myself Go” compared to your other work. Tell me about the process of going in this new direction. It sounds like it’s coming from a different place.
I think looking back on the other records that I put out, they were just of a time and a place, and what I knew in those times and what my musical influences were. [With “Letting Myself Go”] I gave myself permission to speak this personally in song form. And that can be kind of tricky. It’s like a journal entry set to music. But it turns out it’s liberating. So the theme of the song is liberation. It’s this self-fulfilling thing.
You’ve said, “This song has helped me find peace within myself by embracing the beauty of letting go.” Can you expand on that?
I find that creating anything gives me the opportunity to see something in front of me and then move on. It’s getting an idea out of my head and being able to understand it in a different way. And I think this song came at a time when I felt like I needed to hear those words come out of me, you know? It helped me move forward. It gave me hope that I can take my experiences and grow from them. And this felt like a way of solidifying it for me. It’s a personal anthem.