Single Premiere: Destinie Lynn, “Once, Twice”
Learn about the first single off the L.A.-based folk/country singer-songwriter’s upcoming EP, and get an exclusive early listen!
Destinie Lynn, "Once, Twice" single artwork
Destinie Lynn has lived in and around Los Angeles most of her life, but you might not think it to listen to her roots-drenched music. There’s a reason for that: “I didn’t grow up in the South, but my dad’s family’s from Birmingham, my grandma’s from Texas and Grandad’s from Baton Rouge,” she says. “We were in California, but I was raised in a Southern house.”
Lynn remembers hanging out with her grandfather in the garage, listening to old blues greats like Muddy Waters. Her grandmother liked to listen to country/Western, and her mom played “all kinds” of music: everything from Shania Twain to Prince to Nina Simone. “It was never really discussed that ‘this is what good music is,’ it was just in the air,” she says.
Lynn herself has been singing all her life, but she started songwriting in high school and picked up guitar in college. “I didn’t know what it would sound like for me to express what I was feeling in song until I heard Jewel’s first record,” she says. “I thought, ‘I want to do that, just me and a guitar, telling stories.’ I had heavy singer-songwriter influences in high school.”
Destinie Lynn. Photo credit: Nikki Smith.
Her sound carries the lineage of all those varied influences, beautifully marrying country and jazz and blues to a singer-songwriter style. It’s a blend that’s somewhat of an outlier in the pop-heavy L.A. music scene.
“I’m one of the very few people in the L.A. music scene doing very Americana-influenced folk, being more roots-influenced. There’s not a lot of us. And fewer females, and even fewer Black females. It’s kind of isolating,” she admits. But she’s in contact with other Americana artists in the area about how to support one another and create more of a scene for their style. “I’d like to have songwriter rounds that are more genre-specific and just strengthen that network—and maybe bring more people in who might be interested in this style of music but haven’t really considered it!”
She’s felt pressure to use her talents to create more mainstream music, which she’s staunchly resisted. “People sometimes suggest that I tweak my sound a little this way or that way to be more accessible and pop-friendly, but I’m adamant about following what I feel to be true to me and what I want my music to sound like,” she says. “I encourage other artists to do the same and not give into pressure. I strongly believe in not allowing yourself to be put in a box, and being who you are and not apologizing for it. I have a conviction that it’ll eventually pay off.”
Her upcoming EP, Little Ghost, will run the gamut of Americana, from country to folk singer-songwriter to a bit of gothic folk. “It’s not so much the sound that ties it together,” she says. “I had the idea to tell a story with these songs.”
Destinie Lynn. Photo credit: Nikki Smith
The Single
“Once, Twice” is very much on the country end of the spectrum. With its classic waltz rhythm, plaintive fiddle, and simple but thoughtful lyrical structure, it’s a broken-heart ballad with a stern warning underneath: “Oh you’ll be sorry someday / If you leave my loving behind.”
Lynn says she channeled her grandmother’s strong-willed attitude for the song: “The ‘once, twice’ line came to me, and after that I feel like my grandma’s voice took over. She’s very much that person who’s like, ‘I told you once, I told you twice.’ So I thought, if this was her in the situation, what would it sound like?”
Lynn’s delivery is exquisite, her voice flowing slow and rich like honey. Paired with the melancholy rhythm and melody, it makes the steely backbone of the narrator even more of a surprise. She may be intensely sad about being forsaken, but she knows in the end they’ll regret it and try to change, and that “you’ll be too late / You’ll look up and find that I’m gone.”
Destinie Lynn. Photo credit: Adam Stutz
Get a first listen to “Once, Twice,” which drops Friday, Aug. 26.
Song Credits
Written by Destinie Lynn
Produced by John Caviness
Mixed & Mastered by Ramita Arora
Vocals, Guitar: Destinie Lynn
Upright Bass: Paul Tillery
Fiddle: Jamie Shadowlight
And come back to Adventures in Americana next week for an exclusive look at the music video!
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the primary music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley!
