Photo courtesy of Hannah Cohen

It was only a few years ago that Blair West was thinking to herself, ‘I could have been something.’

Her lifelong love of music and pursuance of singing and songwriting took a turn she wasn’t expecting, leaving her feeling uninspired. She gave into the pressure of people telling her that her chances of a successful music career was low, and instead started a corporate career.

As she was thinking about how she could have been something, she realized an incredibly valuable detail: she was only in her mid-20s! There was absolutely nothing stopping her from performing. She started writing songs, cold-calling venues asking about opportunities to play and dabbling in various genres to find a sound that she best resonated with.

“It took a lot of getting myself to really [find] the confidence and chutzpah to go for it so I challenged myself to just start writing songs,” she said. “As time passed, I realized that it was exactly where I'm meant to be.”

Last spring, West found herself recording her debut EP. When she received the final mix, nothing about it felt authentic to her. She wrestled with whether or not she should release it regardless, but ultimately decided that she wanted her first musical release to be exactly as she envisioned it. She went back to the drawing board, finding a friend of a friend who understood her vision in a way that gave her the confidence to try again.

What came from that confidence is her first single, “All this to Say”. The inspiration stemmed from many, many songs about past lovers or jilted relationships and how her current, healthy relationship was nowhere in those. ‘All of that to say’ became a phrase she found herself using a lot - ‘all of that to say, I love you’ or ‘all of that to say, I’m happy we found each other.’ She knew that that phrase and those feelings needed to be at the forefront of her first single.

“Sometimes writing love songs and expressing happy emotions can be the more difficult task, because I sometimes would feel like writing a song about being in a happy relationship would sound cliche or ambiguous or it wouldn't sound as original as a heartbreak song or it just didn't come as naturally,” she said. “I really wanted to push myself because at the end of the day that's where I was in my life; I'm in this really happy relationship and I want to be able to express that through song, so I started to think about how specifically I wanted to do that. I started to think about the most amazing experience of what real, stable, secure love is for me - just being really at peace and being super happy and relieved and joyful and feeling so good all around.”

The goal of her first single was to end up with a simple, timeless song that gave an understanding of who she is as an artist. She wanted to deliver something that she could look back on and still feel that it is an accurate representation of what she brings to the table musically and still makes listeners feel something.

Blair West understands the probability of success and how demoralizing that can be for artists. She gave into that probability, letting it discourage her from giving it a proper try. With age comes perspective, and now she realizes that just because she won’t realistically be selling out Madison Square Garden or winning a Grammy in her lifetime, that shouldn’t stop her from enjoying every part of being a performer.

“I won't be able to look back and say I didn't face my fears and put myself out there,” she said.

All of that to say, she is no longer afraid of the unknown.