Q&A: Gatlin Reclaims Being the Eldest Daughter in Debut Album
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
“I KNOW WHO I AM, WHERE I’M FROM AND WHERE I’M GOING” — encapsulates both the reckoning and the reclamation at the heart of Gatlin’s debut album, The Eldest Daughter. Across ten intimate, piano-driven tracks, Gatlin fuses sharp wit with confessional storytelling, manifesting a record that is as much a confrontation of her past as it is a celebration of the life she’s chosen for herself.
The Eldest Daughter is grounded in reflection through Gatlin’s experiences coming out in a deeply conservative and religious community that create the album’s emotional core. The collection navigates the pain of rejection, the questioning of long-held beliefs and the eventual liberation of asserting one’s identity on one’s own terms. “It’s not only about taking control of the life I’ve decided to live,” Gatlin says, “but sticking up for it.”
At the center of this debut is the piano-driven standout “Soho House Valet,” which Gatlin describes as the album’s “north star.” The track delicately balances intimacy and levity, confronting familial strife while questioning the purpose of songwriting itself: “Heavy, I don’t mean to put that on you,” she repeatedly soars on the chorus. The song’s catharsis extends beyond the music, embodying the artist’s realization that she can navigate societal pressures and familial expectation while still creating space for her truth.
“As the eldest daughter of my family, I’ve always felt like I had to be strong and never burden anyone,” Gatlin reflects, “but digging through stuff I never expected to share and then sharing this song anyway started a healing process.”
This duality of resistance and reflection, joy, and loss is what makes The Eldest Daughter resonate. The album is at once a record of refusal, a declaration of independence and self-determination, and a meditation on what is inevitably left behind.
On the closing track, “Kissimmee,” Gatlin revisits her childhood in Florida as a “barefoot little wild child,” conjuring a landscape of pink camo pellet guns, red pickup trucks and winding back roads. These memories are neither idyllic nor entirely fraught, but they anchor the album in deeply personal formative experiences.
“This record is me exploring distance and perspective from my past, of owning the good and the bad and how they both informed the way I’ve made my own life,” she says.
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?
GATLIN: I definitely go in phases, so I wanted to return to myself and return to where I grew up, which is Florida. It started because I was processing some childhood trauma and therapy. I feel like I have to work through this. My creative outlet, my art form, is writing songs. I was writing a lot about it. A lot of the production and a lot of the writing, it was going back to what I loved as a kid and has stood the test of time, like what I've still loved and kind of stripping back. Some of the album still has the pop elements, but a lot of it is a little bit more organic instruments. It's different, but the same, but different.
LUNA: You have released your debut album The Eldest Daughter and a huge congratulations is in order! You’ve described The Eldest Daughter as both a reclamation of self and a confrontation of your past. What moments or realizations made you feel ready to tell this story now, through a full album?
GATLIN: When the I Sleep Fine Now EP came out, and a lot of family dynamics changed at that point. I was fully independent and living on my own in LA. There were a few family confrontations and a few things in me that were coming up in my personal relationships that stemmed from unresolved issues that I needed to work through. I realized, especially after the I Sleep Fine Now EP, I write a lot of breakup songs and that's what I'm really good at. That's very comfortable for me.
I'm like, ‘Well, what else is there?’ I've always been kind of afraid to fully claim who I am and what I believe politically. I'm not a Christian anymore, but this is what my spirituality looks like. I think I've always been afraid of disappointing people. I decided to write about that fear and really being in your face about it, so that I am not timid of it anymore and I can fully claim this.
LUNA: The title itself is powerful. What does being “the eldest daughter” symbolize for you personally, and how did that shape the way you approached these songs?
GATLIN: Siblings can grow up in the same household, but have very different experiences with their parents or with growing up. For me, I think it was a lot of responsibility, pressure and perfectionism. My parents were very strict on me, and by the time it gets to the baby, you know, free reigns. I can be extremely perfectionist. It took me this long to be able to proclaim my identity because I felt all this pressure to be perfect for my siblings or be perfect for my family.
I think lots of times, the eldest daughters can come around and be the truth tellers, or be the ones who are pointing out that something is wrong. They’re the ones advocating for other people, and lots of times, not tending to their needs, which I have a tendency to do. I think all of the issues that were coming up that I was writing about, when you get to the root of why I am this way, it was a lot of childhood shit, probably because I'm a woman, my birth order and the responsibility put on me at such a young age.
LUNA: Did you take any creative risks or experiment with new approaches on The Eldest Daughter compared to I Sleep Fine Now? What felt different this time around in how you expressed yourself?
GATLIN: I self produced two songs on this album, and that's very new. I started learning production with “Pipe Dream” that was the first thing I ever really worked on, so that was a different experience that I took a lot from.
LUNA: You call “Soho House Valet” the “north star” of the record. Can you tell us about why this song specifically stands out to you and is central to the album’s core?
GATLIN: It was the first one that I wrote, truly using it to help me process something that had happened. I wrote it a week after I got into a fight with my dad, which I talk about in the second verse of the song. I just wrote it for myself. I think it was the north star in the sense that I told myself I wanted to make this record with that same amount of honesty and vulnerability. If I didn't have other people in mind, if I didn't have my family in mind filtering things through, or even what do fans want to hear the most, versus just making it for me. I never thought I would put it out. I really liked it, so let me make a whole album using this same formula for myself, and not thinking about anything outside of it.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on the album — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who Gatlin is right now?
GATLIN: It changes a lot, but right now my favorite is “Kissimmee” because I feel very moved through all of this. When it comes to grief and things that you go through, things come back and it's a roller coaster. That one is fun to play live. I'm in a nostalgic era right now of really missing being a kid, and all the amazing, wonderful things about Florida that I really love and when things were simple and lovely. There were a lot of things about growing up in Florida, which are Southern religious that weren't great, but there were also a lot of things that I feel like I'm just nostalgic about right now.
LUNA: Now that you’ve created this record, what parts of yourself do you feel you’ve reclaimed most powerfully?
GATLIN: My queerness. I don't really know exactly what label it is, but for a long time, I identified as bisexual, and I also identify as demisexual. I hadn't had much romantic experience at all, and I very much put into question if I was faking it or I'm not actually gay. I had a lot of self doubt about it, and so I always felt a little timid to call myself a part of that community, or feel really secure in my queerness. Through putting out this record and “If She Was A Boy” about the confusions of that and having other queer people be like, ‘I feel seen in this,’ or ‘I feel understood in this,’ has made me feel like that's a solid piece of my identity that I'm not going to shy away from anymore. I'm also very in love right now and have a partner, and that's something that I'm now super secure and proud of and not shying away from at all.
LUNA: How do you hope listeners — especially queer people navigating similar environments — receive this album?
GATLIN: I think just feeling seen. I think this is a really sad, heavy album, especially the middle part. I think it's a dark time right now. It's really hard. I think that chosen family and community is a really, really important thing right now. I think being able to express sadness, with anger, with all of these different emotions that maybe people in similar places are feeling, I think it's important to express that.
I hope that they feel seen and heard in it. I think a lot of times we go no contact with people, and that's brought up a lot of stuff later on, so just acknowledging this sadness, of ‘I wish that I had a family,’ or ‘I wish my family was more understanding,’ and that I didn't feel like I've lost my family to politics and religion, and I'm sad about that. I need to talk to my community about that. I need to talk to my friends about that.
LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this new chapter in your career?
GATLIN: I'm a little burnt right now. I think it is community. I think staying in community. Things feel really, really, really, really bad right now. The only thing that makes me feel better is being with people that I love and making art and fighting up against it. I can tend to feel quite hopeless and so I think staying in community and filling myself up in that way is what keeps everything going.
LUNA: How are you planning on celebrating the album release?
GATLIN: I am having a New York show on October 7 to celebrate the album, and I'm just going to be in New York when it comes out and hang out with some friends. My managers live in New York, so I'm sure we'll go out and eat good food. I'm excited. It's my first album like I that feels like a big deal to me.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like for you that you would love to share with Luna?
GATLIN: I'm feeling good. I'm feeling like a lot is going on, and so I'm having to do a lot of self care. A lot of being with my friends and my family and I'm so grateful that I get to play this LA and this New York show, because the landscape for touring is pretty hard right now, because things are so expensive. My dream and my desire is to keep playing more shows. I'm grateful for the two that I have around this album. I'm just looking forward to continuing to grow and showing up for listeners in my community, and just continuing to process everything. I feel like everyone's going through it right now, and so I think just as much as we can be there for one another is what is needed.
