Q&A: Becca Hannah Reclaims Her Power on Debut Album ‘Tonight In My Dreams’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photo Credit: Ken Webb
BECCA HANNAH DOESN’T JUST SING ABOUT HEALING, SHE ACTIVELY REACHES FOR IT — On January 23, soulful R&B singer-songwriter Becca Hannah will unveil her long-awaited debut album, Tonight In My Dreams — a luminous, ten-track journey through love, loss, growth, fear, and reclamation. Soft and glossy on the surface, the album carries a hidden emotional weight beneath its jazz-laced production and honeyed vocals, revealing an artist stepping fully into her truth.
At the heart of the record is “Empathy,” a vulnerable standout that captures the internal battle that sparked much of the album’s emotional core. On the track, Hannah reflects on her tendency to overextend herself in the name of compassion, losing her sense of self in the process. “I’ve had this habit of internalizing other people’s opinions, values, and experiences so deeply that I’ve lost a sense of where I’ve stood as an individual,” Hannah says. “I’ve given people and their judgements the benefit of the doubt in ways that have led me down a dangerous path of self-doubt and further insecurity.”
Those words cut to the bone of the track’s intention. Hannah doesn’t present empathy as a soft virtue, instead, she exposes its darker side: the way it can blur boundaries and erode a sense of self when taken too far. The final lyric, “Empathy, could it be the death of me?” arrives like a revelation, powered by a commanding horn arrangement from George Pereli.
With that question comes resolution. “Yeah, empathy could destroy me and my wellbeing, but I won’t let it,” Hannah declares. “I am reclaiming my power, identity, individuality, and honoring the evolution of my human experience.”
Tonight In My Dreams is born from lived experience and emotional excavation. Hannah explores lust, love, fear, loss, growth, and longing, layering her soulful vocals over jazz and R&B arrangements that feel both intimate and cinematic. Drawing inspiration from female powerhouses like Amy Winehouse, Corinne Bailey Rae, and Erykah Badu, Hannah creates a world where softness and strength coexist.
“The music is for connection,” Hannah says. “We all love, we all suffer, and how beautiful is it that we can relate to each other through songs that highlight all of the above? It brings a sense of community and acknowledgement of our humanness. It makes the ebbs of life more manageable, and the flows all the more blissful.”
The album was tracked live with a nine-piece ensemble, giving the songs a full, breathing presence. It was recorded and mixed by Jim Scott inside his secret studio, a space filled with vintage gear and creative energy. A single visit confirmed that this was where the album was meant to live.
As Tonight In My Dreams approaches, Hannah is no longer dissolving into the emotions of others. She’s standing fully in her own.
Photo Credit: Ken Webb
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more.
For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?
BECCA: I would say Carol King, for sure. I grew up listening to her so much and her combination of soul and folk, and her songwriting style is just so unique and so warm, and it just always feels like home. I think I take that with me when I'm performing and when I'm writing. I'm super grateful for Carol King, and then also Nora Jones, her jazz and blues that she effortlessly exudes in all of her music is a huge inspiration of mine as well. I also have been listening to her since I was a very young child. We have a similar vocal range, so I've covered a bunch of her songs for years. And same with Amy Winehouse. Amy Winehouse is a huge one for me too.
LUNA: What kind of atmosphere or emotional space do you aim to create for your listeners?
BECCA: I aim to create a space that feels flexible and open. I'm never trying to aim for this one size fits all approach. Through my lyrics and genre, I want all people of all positionalities and perspectives on art and music to feel understood and resonate with even just an ounce of what I'm singing or writing. I want people to feel understood and also to be able to get out of their heads and into their bodies more. I feel like good music does that for me. It gives me that visceral reaction and that's what I aim to evoke in my listeners.
LUNA: Are there particular moods or themes you find yourself gravitating towards when writing and performing? How do you channel these into your music?
BECCA: I channel a lot of nostalgia with my writing and my singing, just nostalgia for maybe even a time that didn't exist. Overall, nostalgia is something that I always come back to when I'm writing. I love the bittersweetness of it and how it's so pleasurable, but also painful at the same time. It really strikes a deep chord. Every human experience is nostalgia in some way. I think it's just such a powerful concept and emotion that has so many different colors to it and layers to it.
When I’m performing, I channel the emotions behind the lyrics that I resonate with the most deeply at the moment in the moment. I did musical theater growing up too, so there's some songs that I lean into my musical theater identity to really capitalize on the performance. My song “Caramel” is very theatrical compared to all my other songs, and it's just so fun. It just puts me in this very fun, light hearted, giggly mood. I feel like I'm singing, I'm almost channeling my inner Sally Bowles from Cabaret.
LUNA: You just released your newest single “Empathy” which is a sneak peek off your upcoming debut album Tonight In My Dreams. Can you walk us through the inspiration behind the track? What was the emotional tipping point that led you to write this song?
BECCA: “Empathy” is inspired by this persistent challenge that I've faced my whole life of over empathizing with people around me, and in a way, that brings me out of my own sense of self and perpetuates this people pleasing pattern that I've been accustomed to and subconsciously. Writing “Empathy” has helped me reclaim my power in unlearning that and being able to be secure in myself and my own decisions and my own honor, my own well being over others in a way that's actually serving others as well. I feel like there have been times where I really do lose sense of myself because I take into account so many other people's feelings and situations and also their thoughts and their opinions and their values, and then I'm uprooted into their worlds, and I'm lost and drowning in everyone else's worlds, and I can't find mine. Writing “Empathy” helped me reclaim that sense of self and security within myself, and singing it too, further perpetuates that. It's really therapeutic for me whenever I sing it.
LUNA: You are about to release your debut record Tonight In My Dreams next month. Can you share a bit about the direction of Tonight In My Dreams — what inspired you to explore the themes or emotions in this project?
BECCA: Me and my creative partner Tristan wrote a lot of the songs together in a very nonlinear time. It was all done in a very nonlinear timeline. I'd written “Empathy” with him three and a half years ago, and we were sitting on it because we didn't really know we wanted to be on a project, but we were surrendering to the process of when that would be released. Last year, we started writing more songs, and Tristan came up with the idea of putting this on a full length album. That sparked even more ideas for more songs. All of the songs were inspired by some experience in our lives, whether that be a heartbreak, or longing for someone, or dealing with mental health struggles, or falling in love and being in a healthy partnership, and the nuances of that and like the beauty of that. We wanted to touch on growing up in general and navigating our twenties with the ups and downs of all of it.
We felt like it could be cool to tell a story of all of these experiences in more of a cohesive manner. We created a concept album, which I had never really considered doing before. I feel like the concept album, every song is relevant to me, because at some point in my life I was experiencing the energy of that emotion and we told the whole story. It's like a love story, coming of age story, heartbreak story, all combined in one. Everyone can relate to it in some kind of way, shape or form.
LUNA: I would love to touch more on the creative process behind the album. You worked with producer Jim Scott. What was it like bringing him into your creative process, and how did he influence the sound of the album?
BECCA: He's such a legend. His wisdom is so remarkable. He just knows so much, and he really challenged me to let go of parts of my perfectionism and surrender to the process of cutting a record that sounds like a record and not like a record that has to sound perfect. There were a couple vocals we tuned, and he was like, I don't think we need to do that. He encouraged me to really take a step back and zoom out on the project overall and the beauty of the imperfections. I trust him because he's a legend. He's worked with such incredible industry breaking artists who have changed the way that all of us listen to music. It was a challenge, but it was also really affirming to know that he believed in me so much, and he still believes in me so much. He would tell me when I was going too far with something, or when I could modify one other thing, and it was very consistently open and authentic and collaborative and very safe. I felt so safe the whole time.
LUNA: Did you take any creative risks or experiment with new approaches on the album compared to your previous releases? What felt different about your creative approach or mindset?
BECCA: I think the fact that I recorded live with the full band was something new for me. It's so interesting when I record live with the full band, my vocal performance is just automatically better, something about the energy, just the instrumentation and everything happening at once in the same space, really energizes me and grounds me. That was a very beautiful experience, being able to collaborate with all these incredibly talented people in real time brought up the timeless energy of the genre that we're trying to create in the album, whereas my previous stuff is just a little bit more produced in a more modern way. I think I resonate more with the analog approach and more of the vintage sound. And having a horn section was amazing. I've never done that before.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on Tonight In My Dreams — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who Becca Hannah is right now?
BECCA: “Empathy,” I would say is one of them, for sure. I feel like it's almost like a mantra that I sing to myself, because it's such a core part of who I am. It highlights my strengths, and being able to be such an empathetic person and really hear everyone's side of the story and really stand in other people's shoes. But then it also highlights my challenges and it reminds me of how much more control I am of myself and in the way I live my life.
“Miriam” is a song about my childhood therapist who's no longer with us, who helped me navigate my debilitating anxiety as a kid that I literally have had forever. I call on her. I try to channel her when I'm having these moments of chaos and distress, and I feel like she's the umbrella for the album, and me calling out to her and thanking her, and just expressing my gratitude and recognition of her. I feel that she's a huge part of who I am today. I'm just so eternally grateful for that.
LUNA: Much of your new work speaks to turning inward and finding strength. What does self-love look like for you today compared to a year ago?
BECCA: I feel like self love now is the act of doing kind things for yourself, even when you don't always feel like it, and also giving yourself grace when you don't meet your standards, or whatever your standards are. Just holding space for any imperfection and any disappointment, because the more we judge it, the worse we feel and the less we love ourselves. That's where I'm at now, and it's really challenging, but that's how I'm going about it.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the upcoming year look like for you that you would like to share with Luna?
BECCA: I'm feeling really excited to put this record out and have people hear what I've been up to for the past year. I have some great merch coming out as well. We're pressing vinyls as well. I’m going to take a couple regional tours on the west coast and the east coast in the New Year, which I'm really excited for. I've never gone on an actual tour before, and I love traveling and I love performing and meeting new people, so I'm super stoked for that. I think that'll be a great experience. I'm writing some new stuff too. I'm excited to keep sharing my stories with people and hope that other people can resonate and feel heard and understood.
